Earlier this month PricewaterhouseCoopers published its Innovation Scorecard for the medical device industries in nine countries. The bottomline conclusion was that the US will continue to dominate but emerging markets like China, India and Brazil. In other words: Nothing new here, folks.
The scorecard evaluated each country based on five criteria, which PwC says has helped the US stay on top for decades: "Powerful financial incentives, such as reimbursements for adoption of new technologies; resources for innovation, such as academic medical centers; a supportive regulatory system; demanding and price-insensitive patients; and a supportive investment community of venture capitalists and other investors."
The investment community has been rather supportive of mobile health during the past year. Mobile health startups don't always announced their new rounds of investments, but make no mistake -- money is flowing into mobile health. In fact, MobiHealthNews spent the past few days tallying up the venture capital deals it reported on during 2010 -- as well as a handful that only saw ink in the SEC's archives -- to determine an estimate for the amount of venture capital and strategic investments in mobile health startups last year.
By our count: About $233 million was invested in mobile health startups during 2010.
Here's our list of venture capital and strategic equity investment deals last year, but be sure to let us know if we missed any and we'll add it to the list. Here's the list by size of the investment and the slide show that follows includes images of some of the devices plus a brief description of the company's services and other details surrounding the deals (who invested?) if those details were available. (Click on a deal to jump to it):
1. CardioMEMS raked in $97.88 million.
2. AirStrip Technologies secured $30 million.
3. Phreesia scooped up $19.78 million.
4. MicroCHIPS snagged $16.5 million.
5. AeroScout took in $16 million.
6. Zeo received $12.33 million.
7. Sotera Wireless pocketed $10.75 million
8. FitBit collected $7.98 million.
9. Healthrageous launched with $6 million.
10. Telcare's total came to $4.46 million.
11. Bodymedia: $4 million.
12. ISIS Biopolymer scored $3 million.
12. Catch (formerly Snaptic) brought in $2.3 million.
13. Wellcore rounds it out with $2 million.
14. FitnessKeeper took in $1.11 million.
MicroCHIPS: $16.5 million
January 10, 2010: MicroCHIPS announces a $16.5 million round of investment. The company is developing an implantable medical device that will deliver drugs inside the body. This third round of funding brings the company’s total funding to just north of $70 million. InterWest Partners joined previous investors Polaris Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, Novartis and Medtronic.
