The first half of 2017 was truly remarkable when it comes to digital health funding for startups. According to the recent StartUp Health Insights Funding Rankings 2017 Midyear Report, digital health funding reached $6.5 billion over 306 digital health deals in the first half of 2017. In Q2 alone, funding reached a total of $3.8 billion, which makes it the biggest quarter ever for digital health funding.
Digital Health Funding for Consumer Health Information
Overall, the category that received the most funding in the first half of 2017 was consumer health information, with eight deals totaling $757 million. That number reflects the recent push to get patients involved in their own healthcare plans, via patient engagement mobile apps and more. Creighton O’Neal, vice president of client service in Denver, said patient engagement apps are “designed to help the patient help themselves” by enabling access to more information than they had before.
The digital health market continues to mature, with more Series A deals than Seed deals occurring in the first half of 2017 to prove it. In addition, the average funding size has continued to trend upwards. Although the average Series C size remains truncated, the average Series B has increased substantially.
However, 2017 lags behind 2016 in one major way: there have, thus far, been no digital health IPOs. One venture fund, Rock Health, hopes to change that soon with several well-funded companies poised to make exits.
Twentyseven Global has a successful track record of creating custom digital health platforms for startup companies. Oftentimes, many new companies do not have an in-house software development team, and that’s especially true for startups. Successful funding rounds, like we’ve seen so far in 2017, are important to Twentyseven Global because once a startup has necessary funding, we can partner with them in order to build out the software they need for their platform.
