Wow, what a difference a year makes. Teladoc late last week agreed to acquire health monitoring platform Livongo, which provides services for managing chronic conditions like diabetes, for $18.5bn.
Livongo was a leader of the corporate-backed digital health companies that started an IPO surge last summer with corporate venturing portfolio companies first through the flotation exit doors.
This followed a fairly barren three years for the public markets to open up to the developing digital health sector but the 2019 interest has exploded since the coronavirus and the covid-19 disease shut down people’s movements.
Livongo’s about eight-fold rise since its initial public offering has validated the power of forward-thinking by CVCs and VCs.
But with healthcare already on the watch list for geopolitical considerations – biohacking tends to make politicians more than usually cautious and once you know a population’s genetic make-up and health concerns it becomes a threat opportunity to rival countries – expect the sector to remain fairly siloed by country.
