Those Digital Health IPOs —Flipping the Stack & Filling the Gap

By MATTHEW HOLT I’ve been driven steadily nuts by a series of recent articles that are sort of describing what’s happening in health tech or (because the term won’t die) digital health, so I thought it was time for the definitive explanation. Yeah, yeah, humility ain’t my strong suit. It won’t have escaped your attention that, after five years during which Castlight Health more or less single-handedly killed the IPO market for new health tech companies, suddenly in the middle of July 2019 we have three digital health companies going public. While Livongo, (FD-a THCB sponsor) Phreesia and Health Catalyst are all a little bit different, I’m going to use them to explain what the last decade of health tech evolution has meant. Don’t get carried away by the precise details of the IPOs. Phressia is already out with a market cap of $845m. Yes, it’s true that none of the three are profitable yet, but they are all showing decent revenue growth at an annual run rate of $100m+ and Livongo in particular has been on a client acquisition and annual triple digit revenue growth tear. It’s also the newest of these companies, founded only in 2014, albeit by buying another company (EosHealth) founded in 2008 that had some of the tech they launched with. Going public doesn’t really mean that the health care market will swoon for them, nor that they are guaranteed to change the world. After all, as I pointed out in my recent somewhat (ok, very) cynical 12 rules for ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Technology Matthew Holt Digital health investing Health Catalyst IPO Livongo Phreesia venture capital Source Type: blogs