Healthcare in Hand - An Overview of Mobile Health Startups

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A Market Map of Mobile Health Startups

Emergency rooms are overcrowded, physicians are overworked, and the cost of healthcare continues to rise. To combat these trends, startups are developing digital tools intended to keep care in-home and prevent unnecessary hospital visits. Using the data from their platform, the CB Insights team identified 49 of the leading mobile health startups and the 12 categories within which they operate.

Future Challenges for Digital Healthcare

As evident from the prior note, the digital health revolution appears to be well under way, but many suggest that enthusiasm needs to be curb as expectation have not yet been met. Linda Brookes in Medical News Today outlines the reasons for expectations not being met as:

  • Fewer digital health products than expected are being deployed in real-world clinical settings

  • A cultural barrier that exists between the technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers, & physicians

  • Many apps focus on a single disease, whereas patients with the greatest need have multiple chronic conditions

  • Much of the new digital health technology, especially mHealth apps, lacks an evidence base

  • A big problem for current practice is that many digital health tools do not connect with each other

For physicians to be able to choose the most appropriate technologies for their practice, more clinical guidelines are needed. Perhaps independent organizations will test apps in collaboration with practicing physicians, producing online recommendations.

Singapore's Healthcare System

Singapore shows that unusual fusions of conservative and liberal ideas in health care really are possible. Singapore is a place where the government acts to keep costs low and then uses those low costs to make a market-driven insurance system possible. The system requires individuals to take responsibility for their own health, and for much of their own spending on medical care.

NASH: The Next Untapped Pharma Market

Large drugmakers with piles of cash are on the hunt for promising medicines being developed by small companies to treat NASH, a progressive fatty liver disease poised to become the leading cause of liver transplants by 2020. The eventual market for the complex disease, formally known as Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis, is forecast to be $20 billion to $35 billion as populations with fatty diets increasingly fall victim to a condition with no approved treatments.

Just a few years ago, Gilead Sciences was the lone large drugmaker talking about NASH. But now, Allergan has become a top NASH contender with its acquisition of Tobira Therapeutics and a deal with private Akarna Therapeutics on the same day last year. Other big drugmakers with licensing deals or options on future deals in the space include Novartis, Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers and Johnson & Johnson.

US Biopharma's Overseas Cash Balance

EvercoreISI’s Umer Raffat put together as a list of top 10 players in overseas holdings. The accounts add up to roughly $133 billion. That’s enough to fuel quite a few acquisitions.

Thank You!

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