Market downturn dampens digital health funding, M&A in 2022. These sectors raked in the most cash
By Heather Landi – July 11, 2022
After reaching a fever pitch in 2021, digital health funding cooled down in 2022, raising $10.3 billion across 329 deals in the first six months.
That’s down from the $14.7 billion raised during the same period last year, according to a first-half 2022 funding report from Rock Health, a venture fund dedicated to digital health.
But, it should be noted, $10 billion is still a hefty amount of cash pouring into digital health, and this year’s funding is on track to outpace funding in 2020. This year’s overall funding is now pacing to land around $21 billion, significantly less than 2021’s total of $29.1 billion and well ahead of 2020’s $14.7 billion.
While the first quarter of 2022 funding generally matched the same period in 2021, the second quarter of 2022, with $4.1 billion raised, was the lowest funding quarter since the second quarter of 2020 with $2.9 billion.
Funding isn’t the only thing slowing down this year, according to Rock Health’s report. And after 23 public market exits in 2021, digital health public exits came to a halt in the first half of 2022 as zero startups went public, and a few publicly listed digital health companies returned to private holdings, including health IT company Cerner.