Personalized Medicine? We Still Have a Long Way to Go

Near the end of Vator Splash Health, Wellness and Wearables, a group of venture capitalists took to the stage to discuss which healthtech trends VCs are embracing and which are overhyped. Participants included moderator Patrick Chung of Xfund and panelists Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Ventures, Dave Schulte of McKesson Ventures, Michael Dixon of Sequoia Capital, and Rebecca Woodcock of 500 Startups. 

After the panel discussion, Rebecca Woodcock joined Ronny Kerr to share more details of the discussion and her vision for the future of healthtech.

Woodcock believes that not much is going to change due to any changes the current administration makes to health regulations. There are so many megatrends that are constants, and so many startups and VCs banking on those certainties and constants, that changes in the U.S. regulatory structure won’t change much in the VC world.

Most VCs invest in companies outside the U.S., so by definition investors’ approach needs to be global. “In every country there are health care systems that are not growing or scaling to need. There are administrative and workflow challenges across the board, no matter how good your healthcare system is,” Woodcock said.

What excites Woodcock the most about what’s coming five to 10 years down the road? “Being able to personalize and customize all the decision engines you could potentially build based on all the data gathering we’re currently doing,” she said.

The analytics piece is a little overhyped today, she notes, but there’s massive potential there. There are a lot of problems to solve with the data currently being gathered—interoperability, security, and sharing challenges, to name a few. But she sees great opportunity to develop the capacity to go beyond tools that collect data to providing answers from that data.

Listen to the full interview here.