A study on American-based digital health start-ups has found that nearly half—44 percent—of digital health startups lack credibility clinically, with a general lack of robustness in clinical findings.
“Many venture-backed startups in digital health have limited clinical robustness (reliability),” the authors wrote in the study. The authors examined 224 startups that have received at least one round of investments costing $2 million or more, with an average age of 7.7 years. Altogether, the companies assessed have raised $8.2 billion in venture capital funding since 2011.
Of the 224 startups, 98 of them had a “clinical robustness” score of 0 out of 10.
Further, 15 percent of companies made clinical claims of benefits despite having no clinical credibility at all….