Health Technology Sector Overview – Q1 2018

The Health Technology sector contains companies focused on the digitization of healthcare across the value chain from the providers, to the payers, to the patients and consumers. They often optimize existing medical practices, provide health information to individuals, or create new frontiers in medicine.

In this post we examine the different components of Health Technology and how they make up this startup ecosystem. On our Health Technology research platform, we have classified the companies into 22 categories. This blog post will illustrate what these categories are and which categories have the most companies. We will also look at how these categories compare with one another in terms of their funding and maturity.

Digital Medical Devices Is the Largest Health Technology Category

Let’s start off by looking at the Sector Map for the Health Technology sector. As of March 2018, we have classified 2139 Health Technology startups into 22 categories that have raised $64 billion. The Sector Map highlights the number of companies in each category. It also shows a random sampling of companies in each category.

Health Technology Sector Map

We see that Digital Medical Devices is the largest category with 288 companies. This category contains companies that build IT-enabled medical and diagnostic devices for doctors. These devices include surgical tools, monitoring equipment, and detection equipment. Some example companies are Signostics, MediBeacon, Stimwave, and AliveCor.

We have seen what the different categories making up this sector are and the number of companies in each. What about their funding and maturity in relation to one another? Let’s look at our Innovation Quadrant to find out.

Healthcare Robotics Is the Heavyweight Category in Health Technology

Our Innovation Quadrant divides the Health Technology categories into four different quadrants.

Health Technology Innovation Quadrant

We see that the Pioneers quadrant has the most Health Technology categories with 15. The Pioneer categories are in the earlier stages of funding and maturity. The Established quadrant has three categories have reached maturity with less financing. These three categories are EHR/EMR, Clinical Backend, and Population Health Management.

The Disruptors quadrant also has three categories: Genomics, Health Payments, and IoT Fitness. These three categories have acquired significant financings at a young age. The Heavyweights quadrant contains the Healthcare Robotics category. This category has reached maturity with significant financing. On a relative basis, the companies in this Heavyweight category have reached more maturity and acquired more funding.

We’ve now seen the Health Technology categories and their relative stages of innovation. How do these categories stack up against one another? Let’s look at the Total Funding and Company Count Graph.

Digital Medical Device Startups Have the Most Funding and Companies

The graph below shows the total amount of venture funding and company count in each category.

Health Technology Total Funding and Company Count

As noted earlier, the Digital Medical Devices category leads Health Technology with 288 companies. The above graphic highlights that Digital Medical Devices also leads in funding with almost $13 billion. Some of the best-funded companies in this category are HeartFlow ($477M), Proteus Digital Health ($422M), and ViewRay ($418M).

Conclusion: The Digital Medical Devices Category Leads the Sector

From the above analysis, we can see that Digital Medical Devices dominates Health Technology in funding and company count. On the other hand, Healthcare Robotics stands out as the Heavyweight category in the sector, having reached maturity with significant average funding per company versus companies in other categories. It’ll be interesting to see how the Health Technology landscape will change and develop throughout the rest of 2018.

To learn more about our complete Health Technology report and research platform, visit us at www.venturescanner.com or contact us at [email protected].