[Image courtesy of Pictures of Money on Flickr, per Creative Commons 2.0 license]
There were a record 622 deals worth $5.1 billion in 2016, up from 574 deals worth $4.6 billion in 2015, according to Mercom Capital Group. The amounts involve venture capital funding including private equity and corporate venture capital.
Not all the news was positive. Total corporate funding for health IT companies, which includes debt and public market financing including IPOs, was down by nearly a third, to $5.6 billion, last year.
Digital health companies that are public continue to struggle, noted Raj Prabhu, CEO and co-founder of Mercom Capital Group.
Still, “venture capital funding bounced back after declining in 2015,” Prabhu said.
Since 2010, health IT and digital health have brought in $26 billion, including 2,672 VC deals worth $18.5 billion and $7.5 billion in funding in debt and public markets.
Here are some other report highlights:
- Funding was up for both consumer-centric and practice-centric companies. Consumer-centric companies saw 437 deals worth $3.5 billion in 2016, up from 403 deals worth $3.1 billion in 2015. Practice-centric companies saw 185 deals worth $1.6 billion, up from 171 deals worth $1.5 billion the year before.
- Mobile apps by far brought in the most money in 2016, with $1.3 billion-worth in deals.
- The top VC funding rounds were $500 million to Chinese company Ping An Good Doctor, $183 million to Chunyu Yisheng, $175 million to Flatiron Health, $165 million to Jawbone, and $151 million to Meet You.
- The VC rounds in 2016 involved 1,115 investors (including accelerators and incubators), up from 923 in 2015. Top VC investors last year included Khosla Ventures, GE Ventures, Social Capital, and BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners.
[Want to stay more on top of MDO content? Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter.]
