The State of Global Digital Health

A Conversation with Julien de Salaberry and Ritesh Patel

Julien de Salaberry
CEO and a co-founder of Galen Growth

Julien is CEO along with leading Galen Growth’s Pharmaceutical and other healthcare client engagements, leveraging over 25 years of experience in healthcare with leading brands including Eli Lilly, Boston Scientific, Baxter, GSK, Merck & Co.

Ritesh Patel
Sr Partner and Global Digital Health, FINN Partners
He is an outspoken digital evangelist who has lent his expert point of view in a vast array of forums over his 19+-year career. He is passionate about educating his peers and his clients about what the future of digital looks like for healthcare.

Episode Takeaways

1. In this episode Gil catches up with Julian de Salaberry, CEO & founder of Galen Growth and Ritesh Patel, Digital Health Lead at FINN Partners to discuss the inaugural FINN/Galen State of Digital Health study released at the HLTH 2022 conference in Las Vegas.
2. This report is wide-ranging and the first of its kind. It looks at 200 million data points and examines 14,000 equity investments globally, looking at multiple puzzle pieces and puts them together to paint a complete, strategic picture for all digital health stakeholders. The report is available free of charge as a public service, to help advance patient outcomes and build greater understanding the global digital health landscape. As healthcare transforms around the globe, we need to create transparency in digital health, understanding who is doing what with who and advance from the cottage industry it is now to build greater scale and impact.
3. Digital health investment hasn’t always been smart money. It’s been exuberant money, enthusiastic money, but we need to do better and make sure investments are going to the right place. We’ve seen it before in the early days of ecommerce and the internet. Enormous sums were spent and then it was dialed back as things became more focused and people learned what the technology was all about. Digital health started with FitBits and activity trackers. We’re maturing and making bigger connections with bigger organizations.
4. If you look at the trend of funding in 2022, ventures most impacted are the late-stage ventures – the major players who need large amounts of funding to remain churning. With specialists stepping in and making decisions connected back to proof points, we’re seeing funding shift back to earlier stage ventures. In terms of valuations, the biggest players took the biggest hit during COVID. By drilling into the data region by region, we see that the Middle East, and Israel in particular, is the biggest player by far in terms of nurturing early-stage innovation, which has a direct connection to the United States market.
5. The business model of today is about value. What value are you adding to the customer you’re selling to? How are you going to bring in revenue? More platforms are coming into play, creating connections to the whole digital health ecosystem. In this era of turmoil and consolidation, if you’re a startup looking at a one-point solution, the question is: Can you connect it to the other parts of the ecosystem to reach exponentially more people than you might alone?

Gil Bashe

Managing Partner, Chair Global Health, FINN Partners
Twitter: @Gil_Bashe
LinkedIn: Gil Bashe

Gregg Masters

Founder & Managing Director, Health Innovation Media
Twitter: @GreggMastersMPH
LinkedIn: Gregg Masters, MPH

Join digital health advocate and author Gil Bashe, on Health Unabashed, as he discusses the power of collaboration and innovation in improving care across the health ecosystem. Sharing stories and insights from a global perspective, Gil looks at the companies and people who are making a difference and offers his opinions on how to connect the dots to transform the industry for good.

On the radio weekdays at 10:30 am, 6:30 pm, & 2:30 am ET.