In its latest round of digital health news briefs, Mobi Health News shared the results of Mercom’s quarterly digital health VC funding report for Q1, which, like Rock Health and Mobi Health News itself, declared the first quarter of 2020 to be a record breaker.
The Mercom report tallied 142 deals from 433 investors that comprised $3.6 billion in investments, a 79 percent increase over Q1 2019. The Rock Health report stated that $3.1 billion had been invested over 107 deals, and Mobi Health News tracked 82 funding deals totaling $2.9 billion.
“Of course, this is not a post about historic funding levels—it is a story of healthy funding momentum cut off at the knees by a global pandemic,” the Rock Health analysis read. “Though some of the economic blow will be tempered by demand for connected health care, we do not anticipate investment activity to keep pace with Q1 levels in the coming months.”
Mercom CEO Raj Prabhu agrees. “There was no evidence of coronavirus affecting digital health funding in Q1,” he said in a statement. “Going forward, we anticipate investors to become more selective in this environment. The era of ‘I don’t want to miss out’ investments may be over. That may not be a bad thing.”
Mercom also noted that there were 41 digital health M&A transactions during Q1 2020.
However, mergers and acquisitions (and other exits such as IPOs) are not necessarily going to continue at that pace. The investors interviewed by Rock Health for its report had differing views about M&As in the current atmosphere. Eight of the 12 respondents agree that “market volatility will significantly slow down digital health M&A activity,” and 11 of the 12 agreed that the digital health IPO window is shut for 2020.
Read more here.