Bay Area health care start-up investments down 35% in third quarter

The Wall Street Journal: In California's Bay Area, third-quarter venture-capital investment in health care-related companies "totaled $421.5 million, down 35 percent from $650.6 million in the same period a year earlier, according to research firm VentureSource. … Bryan Roberts, a venture capitalist at Venrock Associates who invests in health-care companies, cautions against putting too much stock into one quarter's worth of numbers, noting that such figures are typically 'too short-term, too narrow a window and a lagging indicator.' Still, he and other Silicon Valley investors say they aren't shocked to see the pause in dollars flowing to health-care start-ups locally and nationally. So far this year, the regulatory environment around drugs and medical devices has become murkier." Medical device ventures, "which tend to be more capital-intensive endeavors," have been "particularly hurt," with investments down 45 percent in the third quarter (Tam, 11/10).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.