After several years of testing the water with small scale pilots, the life sciences industry is now becoming serious about adopting & integrating digital health solutions into their traditional offerings. Recently, many new investments have been made and exciting new partnerships have been established between life sciences companies and digital health innovators. A number of the key players who have participated in these transactions will be attending the Healthtech Summit. The Summit brings together the No 1 pharmacompany, the No 1 MedTech company and the No 1 food company along with the founders & CEOs of 40 of the most promising European digital health & medtech growth companies and a group of international investors in digital health and medtech, who collectively manage and invest more than $40Bn in capital.
In the first half of 2015, on the investment side, Merck's Global Health Innovation fund has been very active, with participation in several funding rounds including: Cleardata $25M round, Ayogo $2.5M round, AdvanDx $2.5M round, Daktari $15.5M round, Aventura $14M round, and Liaison's additional financing. Medtronic has participated in Glooko's $16.5M funding round, is also partnering with Samsung and IBM Watson and is in the process of buying Dutch diabetes clinic Diabeter. Samsung in turn has invested in Dacadoo and Roche and is participating in MySugr's $4.8M round. Meanwhile Novartis & Qualcomm have created DrX capital: a $100M fund dedicated to investment in digital health, and have already sourced 150 potential deals. Proteus Digital Health (another Novartis investment) announced that the first integrated digital medicine will launch in 2016, the company already has a unicorn valuation and is cited as a likely IPO candidate. Therasolve raises $2.4M for memopatch adherence reminders, and Sophia Genetics evokes the possibility of an IPO the next years.
In partnership news since the beginning of 2015, the following companies (who will attend the Healthtech Summit next week) have all been very active. J&J recently announced they will partner with Google on robotic surgery tools and will open a new JLABS accelerator; Sanofi is currently working on a fully remote diabetes trial with Mendor and is talking about the rise of digaceuticals and is studying the potential for digital treatments to replace drugs in some therapies; Novartis, Pfizer and Lilly have decided to give their "patients to trials" consortium platform to Trialreach (who in a recent round raised $13.5M in investment). Roche and Novartis are both partnering with Qualcomm Life's 2NET data hub in clinical trials, and Roche's Genentech signs $60M patient data deal with 23andme. Philips creates 5 year $25M research partnership with MIT, and health tech incubator with TEVA, and Merck opens telehealth clinics in Africa. The Healthtech Summit is supported by global sponsors Gide Loyrette, Pictet, host sponsor Canton de Vaud as well as Life Sciences companies, Boston Scientific, Medtronic and Merck Global Health Innovation.
Alex Osterwalder, co-founder of Strategyzer and author of Business Model Generation will give a keynote on July 1st. There is a strong need for the life sciences industry to innovate beyond just science and technology, and to also address innovation in business models, starting with a shift of focus towards the end consumer as the real client. Alex will address this topic during his closing speech and subsequent workshop.
Other speakers at the event are Robert Ascione, Razorfish Healthware, Martin Kelly, HealthXL, Toby Lewis, Global Corporate Venturing and Bill Taranto, Global Health Innovation (Merck).
For further information, please visit:
http://www.techtour.com/health_tech_summit_2015/
2015 Digital Health Selection Committee Members
Asset Management, Bessemer Venture Partners, Boston Scientific, DFJ Esprit, Endeavour Vision S.A., Gilde Healthcare Partners, Health XL, Index Ventures, Invesco Perpetual, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Medtronic Europe S.A., Mooreland Partners, Nestlé S.A., Norwest Venture Partners, Omega Funds, Orbimed Advisors, PHS Fund, Reed Elsevier Ventures, Samsung Electronics, SMR Capital, Startup Health.
2015 Medtech Selection Committee Members
Baycity Capital, Delta Partners Ltd., Earlybird Venture Capital, Endeavour Vision, Entrepreneurs Fund Management, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Imperial Innovations, NBGI Ventures, Omnes Capital, Salus Partners, Sofimac Partners Investment Capital, Sofinnova.
About The Tech Tour
The Tech Tour was founded in Geneva in 1998 in response to the growing interest in emerging technology companies in various European regions. The Tech Tour brings together investors and high-tech entrepreneurs through its highly successful events - Regional Tech Tours that cover multiple cities in a particular European region and Tech Summits that focus on a particular industry vertical. The Tech Tour focuses on selecting the highest quality companies for its events and as a result selected companies have been very successful in obtaining funding. The Tech Tour over the years has built a very strong and inter-connected community of Entrepreneurs, Investors, Government influencers, Industry experts and Advisers. This community comes together regularly to network, collaborate and to invest their time and money in furthering the high-tech innovation ecosystem in Europe.
About the International Venture Club
The International Venture Club was founded in 2011 as the collaborative platform of leading venture investors promoting successful international investments. Its objectives are to 1) share better practices, 2) build co-investor trust and relations, 3) foster new funding and investment opportunities through joint actions and PR, 4) grow promising companies with corporate partners and co-investors and 5) keep a smart window and support to emerging innovative companies.