Medtech’s Share Of Private Investment Dollars In 2012

Each year, START-UP reviews the sectors of the medical device industry that received private funding to see what will be filling the pipelines of medical device companies in the future. Despite gloomy talk by venture capitalists and strategics predicting a future scarcity of new innovative products, the actual data from 2012 show many categories holding steady and pockets of up-and-coming technologies attracting investment. It’s true that dollars invested in 2012 are only a fraction of what they were five years ago, but the numbers show that the previous year’s sharp rate of decline didn’t really continue in 2012. In 2012 $2.55 billion went into 135 private financing deals as compared with 156 private medical device deals in 2011, which took in $2.86 billion (a figure that doesn’t include in vitro diagnostic technologies). (See Exhibit 1.)