According to a new report from the Austin, Texas-based consulting firm, Mercom Capital Group, venture capital (VC) funding continues to trend upwards, with $493 million raised in the first quarter of 2013 being the highest ever for a single quarter.
Last year, health IT had its biggest year ever for VC funding, and this total in the first part of 2013 just continues that meteoric rise. With a new year has come more money available for funding. The first quarter of 2013 saw 104 funding deals compared to 51 in the previous quarter. There were also 42 early stage deals this quarter compared to 14 in Q4 2012.
According to the report, the report from Mercom, the deals have focused on consumer-focused companies like mobile health, telehealth, personal health, social health, and scheduling. In addition, authors of the report say rating & shopping has become much more pronounced.
“The enormous market opportunity in consumer-focused health has appeared to pique the interest of investors and is likely to continue to grow as witnessed by the surge in VC activity,” Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group, said in a statement.
Health Catalyst, a provider of healthcare data warehousing, raised $41 million in Q1 2013, receiving the largest deal of the quarter. xG Health Solutions, a spinoff of Geisinger Health System that offers population health data analytics and patient and population-focused care management, was a close second, raising $40 million. They were followed by NantHealth, Fitbit, and One Medical Group.
In addition, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity was also dynamic during this quarter, with 46 transactions overall. The biggest ones were athenahealth’s acquisition of Epocrates for $293 million and Allscripts’ acquisition of dbMotion. For more on the latest M&A activity in this industry, be sure to check out the coming issue of the HCI 100.
The entire report can be read here: Healthcare IT Q1 2013 Funding and M&A Report
