Sony ($SNE)-backed medical portal M3 and European VC shop Endeavour Vision have independently stepped up their digital health investment activities. The pair are both seeking to back digital health players using their recently created medtech funds, which in the case of Endeavour Vision has more than $275 million to invest.
Both funds are operating in similar fields, with digital health startups sitting alongside medical device players on the list of companies being targeted. Of the two, Endeavour Vision has revealed more details to date. The European VC shop, which made its name in IT before branching out into biotech and medtech, has rounded up around $275 million for an oversubscribed fund. Having pulled in the cash, Endeavour vision is looking to dole it out in $11 million to $22 million tranches, a process that has already started with a spurt of four investments.
The investments unveiled to date have skewed toward traditional medtech companies, but the fund is interested in the confluence of digital and devices. "The big trend that everybody is talking about is the combination of digital health into medical devices," Endeavour Vision President Damien Tappy told FierceMedicalDevices. "The way we consume medicine in 10 years will not be the same. It's going to be driven by the combination of IT, data, Internet with medical devices. That's a huge opportunity; I personally believe it's as big as when the Internet came on in 2000."
M3, a web portal for physicians, is looking to seize on the opportunity, too. The Sony-backed firm has set up a seed fund with a view to making investments of around $2.5 million in companies active in "areas such as regenerative medicine, medical devices, digital health care and robotics for medicine," Kazuhiro Umeda, CEO of the new investment wing, told Bloomberg.
- read Endeavour's release
- here's M3's statement (PDF)
- check out Bloomberg's coverage
- and FierceMedicalDevices' take