VC investment into clinical trial enablement (CTE) has grown 2.5x over the past five years. This year’s total of $1.1B is higher than any year on record other than 2021 ($2.4B). Although Q3’22 marks the lowest quarter since Q1’18 ($59M), investors are bullish in the space.
While most other healthtech subsectors have seen valuations drop this year, median later-stage CTE valuations are only 7% lower than in 2021.
Early-stage valuations increased dramatically as well, following investor patterns across healthtech to act early to avoid higher later-stage valuations and expensive financings.
There has been a broad industry commitment to patient recruitment, up 250% from 2020 and the focus of Reify Health, CTE’s largest deal of 2022 for $220M. Larger public companies like Walgreens are entering the space and utilizing community trust and embeddedness to recruit more diverse patients to trials.
Notes: 1) EU includes UK-based companies. Source: PitchBook, SVB proprietary data and SVB analysis.
Healthtech has only scratched the surface in terms of using data, AI and ML to develop drugs, but this is an area that is rapidly growing.
Biopharma VCs have deep pockets and will continue to approach companies using tech capabilities to aid CTE.
Drug Discovery
$559M
$26
$1.5B
Workflow Optimization
$97M
6
$459M
Patient Recruitment
$7M
2
$122M
Mobile Trials
Notes: 1) EU includes UK-based companies. 2) All 2022 data is through 9/30/22. Source: PitchBook, SVB proprietary data and SVB analysis.