U.S. health system venture capital deals spiked during the pandemic before cooling down in the years since, according to a New England Journal of Medicine article.
However, academic medical centers, in particular, may need to ramp up their venture capital investing in the face of cuts to federal research funding and public insurance, the authors wrote.
Since 2010, the venture capital arms of 10 top academic medical centers have participated in at least 453 investment deals totaling $12.1 billion and averaging $26.8 million, per the Nov. 22 perspective. The most popular funding targets were drug discovery ($4.2 billion), biotech ($1.5 billion), health IT ($1.1 billion), enterprise systems ($807 million), ambulatory care ($668 million), lab services ($533 million), and therapeutic devices ($531 million).
The authors, from Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, analyzed PitchBook data between 2010 and 2024 for Mayo Clinic Ventures (Rochester, Minn.), Cleveland Clinic Ventures, Mass General Brigham Ventures (Somerville, Mass.), NewYork-Presbyterian Ventures (New York City), Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures (Los Angeles), UPMC Enterprises (Pittsburgh), Mount Sinai Ventures (New York City), Orlando (Fla.) Health Ventures, Northwell Holdings (New York City), and University Hospitals Ventures (Cleveland).
Here are the health system venture capital deals by year, the researchers found:
2024: 39
2023: 42
2022: 49
2021: 54
2020: 35
2019: 30
2018: 26
2017: 34
2016: 34
2015: 30
2014: 24
2013: 19
2012: 20
2011: 9
2010: 8
