Below is a presentation compiled by Rock Health on the state of Digital health funding through the middle of 2015.
Here are some highlights:
- 136 digital health companies each raised more than $2M in the first half of 2015
- Top three categories in digital health funding are
- wearables and biosensing: $387M
- analytics and big data: $212M
- healthcare consumer engagement: $176M
- 330 distinct investors funded digital health companies, including 108 that have funded a digital health company for the first time.
Here’s the full presentation:
Within the wearables and biosensing market, the mobile healthcare applications market is estimated to be worth $6.4B in 2015; a number expected to almost double in 2016 ($13.5B). This means stiff competition, though: At the time of this posting, there are over 100,000 mobile applications available in the iOS and Android health and fitness marketplace. As Venture Beat quipped earlier this year: “It’s no wonder that more than 70 percent of all mobile health developers achieved fewer than 50,000 downloads and less than $10,000 in revenue.”
Regardless of the steep competition, and rather bleak outlook in mobile app development for connected devices, clinicians and allied health workers are optimistic about the role of these mobile health apps.
Analytics and big data aggregation, together with addressing the ever-present HIPAA compliance and privacy/security issues will be the propellant of this market.
- Industry estimates predict more than 500 million smartphone users will collect mobile health data. This is up more than 5x from the 95 million 2013 mobile health users
- According to a 2013 poll by Radius Market Research, more than 75% of those surveyed will stop using [an app product] if they felt their privacy was violated
- More than 60% of respondents of another poll on privacy were more concerned about data security in 2014 than ever before.