ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Investment in MSK digital health technologies in 2021 dwarfed money flowing into conventional orthopedics, mirroring the disproportionate growth of healthtech investment in life sciences overall, according to an analysis by consulting firm Advisorthopaedics.
The mature musculoskeletal (MSK) industry is experiencing a wave of innovation that is drawing renewed interest from venture investors, albeit with most the attention focused on applying digital technologies to non-surgical parts of the patient’s perioperative journey—telehealth, remote physical therapy, imaging, etc. Innovative conventional medical devices and materials geared toward MSK make up a small portion of overall money coming into the field, and while MSK investment altogether has grown in the past few years, it still lags other subsectors of the life sciences, both in relative and absolute terms.
Those conclusions were the focus of a discussion at the Digital Orthopaedics Conference San Francisco Venture (DOCSF-Venture) in January, on the eve of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, and, like that conference, DOCSF Venture 2022 went virtual on short notice. (See “JPM 2022: Covid-19 Means Tougher Outlook for Medtech,” MedTech Strategist, January 19, 2022.)
