Digital Health Companies Snag $14.7B In Funding In First Half 2021

Digital health companies are big recipients of investments lately with money raised totaling $14.7 billion and rising, Bloomberg reported. That is more raised than in all of 2020.

Rock Health reported that the first two quarters of 2021 were bigger than any other time reported for American digital health funding, according to Bloomberg.

Nearly 60 percent of the funding that came from 372 investments was for $100 million or more, Bloomberg reported.

The pandemic was a chief instigator of new funding, seeing Americans using telehealth much more often, according to Bloomberg. The number of Americans using telehealth services tripled to 60 percent by March 2020.

Even as the pandemic appears to be waning, people still want to use digital health offerings, Bloomberg reported.

Digital health funding raised a decade ago was $1.1 billion, which was about the same amount raised in two weeks of this year, according to Bloomberg. The big earners include behavioral weight loss app Noom, which raised $540 million, and online pharmacy Ro, which brought in $500 million.

The field is now so robust that the number of digital health companies is becoming intimidating to customers, so mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are filling the space, along with offerings from Google and Microsoft that dabble in the field, Bloomberg reported.

Doctors turned to telehealth to help their ailing practices as COVID-19 swept the nation in March 2020, PYMNTS reported. Virtual visits provided ways for them to continue conducting business, with The Telehealth Initiative being an important player in aiding the practically overnight transition to the digital world.

Dr. Corey Howard said the initiative gave him the tools he needed to get control of his workflow, select vendors, optimize his virtual practice and, perhaps most important, “how to code properly and how to get paid.”