Investing in Health-Tech: Healthcare Innovation and Financial Opportunities

Health tech startups have developed solutions that enhance patient outcomes, including telehealth and remote monitoring services.

Alternative care has attracted significant investment, totalling nearly $26 billion since 2019. Software that relieves doctors of administrative duties has also seen notable success.

1. Innovation and Technology

Healthcare and technology sectors have always shared an aim of furthering humanity in meaningful and innovative ways. With our world becoming increasingly digital, technology firms have found the healthcare sector an attractive area of investment both financially and humanitarianally.

Digital innovations can transform health care by improving efficiency, breaking performance trade-offs and developing novel business models. However, implementing these innovations may prove challenging due to barriers within the industry.

Centralized health care systems wield enormous purchasing clout, keeping drug and medical device prices low for consumers while simultaneously restricting innovators’ profits. Community providers who stand to lose revenue or market share to a disruptive venture might take measures against its success by raising antitrust concerns or employing strategies meant to discourage competition.

Even with all their challenges, digital health solutions continue to gain widespread adoption. The key is prioritizing evidence-based technologies that meet patient and provider needs; connecting regulatory, governance, information infrastructure dots so patients trust that their data is secure while health workers utilize digital tools effectively and transparently.

2. Healthcare Costs

Health care costs continue to skyrocket in America and are one of the main drivers of its national debt burden, yet high spending doesn’t correlate to better outcomes or decrease waste or inefficiency.

Research by HFMA highlights innovation as being key in solving our healthcare system’s woes. From liquid biopsies that could revolutionize cancer detection to faster health information sharing, smart ideas executed effectively can radically alter markets.

But innovators face significant hurdles in financing consumer-focused offerings. Investors typically don’t have much experience financing direct-to-consumer medical products and services companies; third-party payers also resist covering some innovations that might benefit consumers directly; they may see more value in something with long-term cost implications, like obesity reduction treatment or expensive diagnostic tests than something with immediate utility for patients. According to HFMA’s research, innovative business models may yield disproportionate profits.

3. Patient Satisfaction

Health care organizations’ pursuit of new knowledge, invention and innovation has long been seen as a cornerstone of medical progress. But at times this pursuit results in prolonged wait times to see clinicians, or creates unwanted variability in decisions and treatments. This pursuit may cause frustration and dissatisfaction among patients.

Significant technology and telecom advances have played an essential role in alleviating frustrations, improving patient satisfaction and increasing healthcare efficiency. They include electronic medical records that facilitate easier coordination among clinicians; advanced diagnostics that facilitate earlier disease detection and better treatments; telemedicine solutions allowing remote consultation with physicians; and 3D modeling software designed to aid surgeons plan procedures more precisely.

These developments are helping propel Healthcare Innovation as an investment theme to significant future growth potential, providing direct exposure through various exchange-traded funds dedicated to Genomics and Telemedicine.

4. Market Growth

Digital health innovations are helping healthcare organizations meet a long-term objective: cutting costs while simultaneously improving patient outcomes. Many of the companies leading this trend boast strong growth potential.

Note, however, that initial valuations for powerful trends may be high; thus resulting in early stage companies incurring substantial losses during development.

Diversifying the exposure of your portfolio into various value pools to minimize this risk is therefore highly advisable. Not only can this help lower overall portfolio volatility but diversifying into value pools with lower starting valuations can reduce overexposure to the most promising healthcare innovation trends.

Financial and Operations value pools (such as workflow automation and care coordination tools ) have proven effective at directly improving productivity for healthcare stakeholders by decreasing operational costs. Furthermore, R&D value pools such as precision medicine solutions such as Tempus can assist drug development timelines by speeding drug discovery while decentralized virtual trial solutions like Medable or TrialSpark facilitate faster patient recruitment into clinical trials (e.g. Medable or TrialSpark).