Swiss Digital Health VC Map

The topic of digital health is on the rise worldwide. In this context, record VC investments in the digital health sector were registered in 2020 in particular. This motivated the Health-Trends team to create a map of national and international VC organizations that invest in Swiss digital health startups.

Funding of digital health companies has been continuously growing and an increasing number of venture funds are entering the space. In 2020, private and public market financing for Digital Health companies increased tremendously propelled by the technology boom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Global venture capital funding in Digital Health, including private equity and corporate VC, came to $14.8 billion in 637 deals, a 66% increase compared to $8.9 billion in 615 deals in 2019.[1] In addition, during Q3 2020, European digital health startups have nearly raised $2.3 billion approaching the 2019 record of $2,9 billion invested in the same time span. Today, more than 620 companies are active in Digital Health throughout Europe. 63% of those companies were created in the last 5 years.[2]

Based on the Health-Trends database, there are currently at least 170 digital health startups in Switzerland. Various domestic and foreign investors are investing in the development of digital health topics in the Swiss market. Health-Trends has now compiled a unique overview of VC firms investing in digital health in Switzerland: The Swiss Digital Health VC Map. The map is divided into the following sections:

• Early Stage including the sub-phases pre-seed and seed investments as well as Series A investments
• Late Stage including Series B and Series C investments and
• Comprehensive Stage, which contains all VCs that could not be clearly assigned to a specific phase.

As the first-ever mapping of this kind in Switzerland, this mapping is meant to evolve and be updated over the next months.

Definition and criterias

Digital Health is a generic term for the topic of digital transformation in the healthcare sector. This term summarizes companies belonging to the field of health in its broadest meaning (going from prevention/wellness to digital therapy) and which developed software or digital technology as a differentiating factor. In addition, according to the classification model[3] of the Winterthur Institute for Health Economics (WIG), digital health can be divided into four segments: Trend Health (lifestyle-oriented), E-Health (medicine-oriented), Tech Health (hardware-oriented) and Data Health (data-oriented). Health-Trends uses these four sectors to categorize digital health startups.

All national and international VC firms that have invested in at least one of the digital health startups on the SWISS DIGITAL HEALTH MAP were considered for the map. We have classified the VC firms on the basis of publicly available information. Change requests regarding reclassification can be submitted directly via info@health-trends.ch. And if your VC organization is still missing on our map, you can report it directly to us via the corresponding online survey:

Detailed report to be published soon

Health-Trends is currently working on a detailed VC report for Digital Health in Switzerland. The publication of the report can afterwards be obtained via our website. If you would like to receive a copy from us, you can already contact us at info@health-trends.ch. We will put you on a waiting list and inform you in time about the publication date.

Sources

[1] According to “Q4 and annual 2020 digital healh funding and M&A report” by Merom: https://mercomcapital.com/product/q4-and-annual-2020-digital-health-healthcare-it-funding-and-ma-report/

[2] According to a European digital health overview by sifted: https://sifted.eu/articles/europes-healthtech-industry-2020/  

[3] Further information on the digital health classification model according to Alfred Angerer et. al (2017) can be found here: https://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/1458