We’re off to the races in 2024 and predictions point to a rebound. Deals in biopharma, specifically, were on the uptick at the very tail end of 2023. The vibe from JPM, the world’s largest healthcare symposium earlier this month, seemed to be (cautious) optimism — especially for M&A and IPO activity which could create some much-needed positive momentum for 2024.
Here are the trends that have captured our attention.
Digital Health Trends we’re watching in 2024
AI (of course)
There’s no point in burying the lede. Honestly, there’s almost no point in mentioning the lede, as it’s a priori for anyone not living under a rock…
Dan Primack, business editor at Axios, referred to generative AI as “the most meaningful platform shift since AOL was sending everyone CDs in the mail.” So it’s no surprise that the application of AI into healthcare will continue to skyrocket in 2024. JPM was, predictably, riddled with AI themes. There’s massive potential for AI to accelerate drug discovery, revolutionize clinical trials, and handle all sorts of admin nightmares throughout the healthcare system.
But AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. And that data will become solid gold. AI is rapidly advancing and we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg for types of data that can be processed and used (there’s so much more than the text-based EMR and claims data…) Beyond the obvious value of large data assets and the licensing deals that will result, this paradigm shift will increase the importance of ownership over personal health history and data. This will create opportunities for technology designed to help people organize, track, understand, activate, (monetize?!) and control their personal health data.
Behavioral and Mental Health tech
The CDC Reports that during the first half of 2019, nearly one in 20 adults in the US reported having regular feelings of depression and the most recent available data (2015-2018) indicated that 13.6% of adults aged 20 years or older used prescription antidepressant medications in the past 30 days. This data doesn’t account for the massive impacts of the global pandemic, or the growing, insidious impacts of the opioid epidemic.
Mental health issues can be frustratingly intangible and the origins are murky. The US surgeon general has declared loneliness a public health crisis and made social connection, youth mental health, and workplace wellbeing national health priorities.
The market is responding to these challenges with a myriad of innovative approaches. Recent deals include $22.5m for Vita Health, a suicide intervention startup and $20M for PursueCare, a digital addiction treatment provider. Nema Health raised $4.1M seed for virtual trauma therapy.
Other niches include:
- Psychedelic treatment platforms like Atai and Mindbloom, providers of medically-supervised ketamine therapies
- Approaches for Adult ADHD Diagnosis like Shimmer, an adult ADHD coaching platform which recently raised a $2.2 M seed round, and Done. which reported $3.6M in revenue for 2022 helping adults manage their diagnosis.
Femtech
Femtech is on the rise. Pitchbook indicates that global venture capital in the space surpassed $2 billion in 2021 and major players were able to secure massive rounds in the uncertain deal climate of 2022 and 2023. In the 2023 Innovation in Women's Health Report, SVB noted that women’s health investment witnessed a 314% increase in investments over the past five years — compared to a 28% increase in overall healthcare investments. Pitchbook predicts the global femtech market will generate $3B by 2030.
While reproductive health has been the dominant theme for femtech companies thus far, we anticipate that aperture broadening significantly. SVB reported investments of $435M in non-fertility femtech startups in Q3 2023 alone. The spectrum of female-focused care ranges far beyond pregnancy and fertility spanning all age groups. There’s opportunity for players to address particular female concerns in many areas like mental health, hormonal health, oncology, dermatology, and pelvic health .
Encouragingly, Femtech players seem to be flipping the script on traditional VC narratives. SVB reports that 76% of women’s health companies have a female founder — making Femtech companies 3X more likely to be female-led than the rest of the ecosystem.
We see a major overlap potential between the behavioral and mental health tech trend and the particular needs of women. CDC data indicates that women are more than twice as likely as men to use antidepressants and nearly one in four women aged 60 and over are using antidepressants.
Remote Monitoring and Remote Healthtech
Teletherapy rode a serious high during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth VC investment has dropped over 80% from its peak of $2.2 billion globally in Q1 2021 to $433 million in Q1 2023, according to PitchBook data. While telehealth in its most traditional sense has seen market retraction, the world of remote medicine is still on the rise. Pitchbook indicated remote monitoring & portable care as a top sector in its Q3 Medtech report — with 95 personalized care and remote monitoring companies accounting for $6.3B in total raised.
Themes within remote monitoring and remote healthtech include:
- Remote diagnostics and monitoring: recent movement includes Pharos Capital Group's acquisition of cardiac monitoring system maker RhythMedix early in January.
- Tracking tech for specific diseases: Rune Labs recently raised a $12M series A to provide symptom tracking tech for Parkinson’s.
And, to throw back to the lede… the data-generating potential of these remote monitoring technologies are astronomical.
