Few topics are as buzzed about in healthcare circles as mobile apps.
Everyone’s moving toward smartphones, the population is aging and mobile apps can bring convenience, greater access and cost savings to the health system, according to the prevailing wisdom.
And that’s probably all true.
But it doesn’t mean venture investors are interested.
One VC who doesn’t expect to jump on the mobile apps bandwagon is Barbara Lubash of Versant Ventures.
“Apps tend to be products with narrow applications and short life cycles,” Lubash said at the American Telemedicine Association‘s annual conference.
Lubash questioned whether an app could be “a sustainable product” because it’s essentially “just an app” and not a technology platform.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
So not only is it difficult for VCs to feel confident in picking a winner in the crowded field of medical mobile apps, but even if they could, the market for any one individual app would likely be too small to justify venture investment.
So what does Lubash look for in a health IT investment? Pretty much the same thing any VC looks for in any investment: a big market, a solution to a big problem faced by key healthcare decision makers and an experienced management team, for starters.
“Health IT is typically taking yesterday’s technology and applying it to healthcare, so the big risk is the market and execution, not the technology,” she said. “That’s why you need an experienced CEO.”
