In one more take on the first half of 2015 funding, Health 2.0 Market Intelligence has funding for the half at $2.2 billion, compared to $2.9 billion at the half-year mark last year. They tracked 2014's total funding at $4.6 billion.
"Funding in 2015 hasn’t kept pace with 2014 but there’s no reason to panic," the report reads. "Early 2014 saw a handful of blockbuster deals (Proteus, Flatiron, Nant, and Ability Networks all closed >$100M) that drove totals up, but the number of deals in 2015 is still tracking closely with 2014."
That said, Health 2.0 includes a number of big deals in that $2.2 billion figure: Allscript's $200 million investment in Nant Health, Oscar's $150 million investment and a $500 million investment in Zenefits. The latter two aren't digital health product or service providers per se.
Health 2.0 currently counts 3,326 companies in the digital health space, with 100 new digital health companies added just this year. They break them down into 1,738 consumer-facing companies, 928 professional-facing companies, 307 companies that focus on patient-provider communication, and 393 data, analytics, and exchange companies.
Consumer-facing companies also took the lion's share of the year's funding so far, with $1.22 billion going to consumer-facing companies (including Zenefits), $463 million going to professional-facing companies, $307 million going to data, analytics, and exchange companies, and $204 million going to patient-provider communication companies.
Health 2.0 contends that the data analytics space is one of the more dynamic categories, as evidenced by some M&A activity in that space.
"In April, IBM’s newly established Watson Health Unit acquired analytics companies Explorys and Phytel, while the following month, IBM-funded Welltok acquired Predilytics, presumably to add another layer of analytics to Welltok’s highly personalized CafeWell platform," they write. "All in all, some major players are making moves for the lead in a much-hyped segment of Health 2.0."
After Zenefits, Nant Health, and Oscar, the top deals of Q2 in Health 2.0's report are Virgin Pulse, PillPack, Doctor on Demand, Aledade, Scanadu, ClearData, and Jiff. These deals accounted for $970.3 million -- 75 percent of the total funding for the quarter.
Health 2.0's report is right in the neighborhood of Rock Health's $2.1 billion figure and Startup Health's $2.8 billion report, which we reported on earlier this month. Each group defines the category of digital health a little differently, which accounts for some expected discrepancies.
