SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Sydney based Healthcare Ventures will invest in early stage and growth companies transforming healthcare via digital health technologies, a news release said.

The investment strategy focuses primarily on Australian companies going global, led by visionary founders, that are redefining how healthcare is provided and consumed whilst delivering better outcomes for all.

The Healthcare Ventures team brings investment, medical and digital health expertise to the table. All are entrepreneurs in their own rights:

Partnership and Fund Manager Board

• Roger Allen AM – Chairman and pioneer of Australia’s venture capital industry is a renowned active early-stage investor and director. Roger has had heavy involvement in several very successful ASX listed digital health companies, including Volpara Health and the recently listed, Doctor Care Anywhere.
• Dr Louise Schaper – Australia’s pre-eminent digital health evangelist and CEO of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.
• Darren Heathcote – Experienced adviser and investor in healthcare.
• Dr Bronwyn King AO – Radiation Oncologist and founder and CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios.

They are joined by an esteemed Advisory Board:

• Grahame Grieve – the ‘Father of FHIR’, advisor to governments, vendors and care providers globally, head of the global FHIR community and is on the list of 15 Health IT Standards and Interoperability Rockstars to Know.
• Dr Amandeep Hansra – General Practitioner, angel investor, advisor and strategist, Ex CEO Telstra Readycare and founder of Creative Careers in Medicine, a community of over 10,000 doctors and co-founder of Australian Medical Angels with over 300 active health tech angel investors.
• Adj A/Prof David Rowlands – One of Australia’s most senior health informaticians with extensive international experience.
• Dr Arran Schlosberg – Medical doctor, software engineer, and co-founding CTO with deep technical expertise and international experience in the healthcare industry, including at HealthMatch, Google, and DeepMind.

“The digitally enabled transformation of healthcare across the globe is happening at a phenomenal pace, accelerated by COVID19 and the resulting focus on data and technologies for advanced individual and population health. We see this as providing significant opportunity for a specialist fund and specialist team focussed on digital health investment,” said Dr Schaper.

“In 2020, digital health start-ups in the USA attracted a record US$14 billion of investment capital, in the largest funding year on record. Australia is rich with brilliant innovators and yet funding is only starting to see traction. Healthcare Ventures aims to rectify that.”

Launching the fund, Allen said “I have been working with and invested in a number of talented health professionals and am seeing continuous deal-flow of innovations coming from the medical community. This shouldn’t come as a great surprise given our best and brightest have been going into medicine but what has changed is a strong entrepreneurship mindset and the ability to transform practises through digitisation. I believe the best way to handle this dealflow is to have a dedicated team and specialist fund led by health professionals supported by strong investment and technical capabilities. The fund will be a relatively small fund and will seek to partner and co invest with many more generalised VC funds both in Australia and overseas.

Focussing on technology, Healthcare Ventures will pay close attention to innovations in fields such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality/virtual reality, large scale data, advanced diagnostics, health IOT and telehealth,” said Allen.

“We acknowledge that investing in healthcare is challenging, as you need to have intimate knowledge of workplace practises and that means being able to both understand and navigate the many nuanced challenges these health professionals face every day,” said Darren Heathcote.

“We took great care, over a considerable amount of time, to build a partnership and advisory board that would provide us with the necessary expertise, such that today, we have a dedicated, specialist team of medical and digital health led professionals and investment experts, able to assist our portfolio companies to execute on the opportunities,” said Heathcote.

“Healthcare Ventures aim to commercialise innovation from the health sector, advance the growth of local industry and the export of Australian innovation and entrepreneurship to the world. Worldwide, we see in increasing demand for digital transformation in healthcare. Australia’s technical expertise has long established itself as an influential and effective provider of innovative solutions for many sectors and we believe Australia’s reputation for high standards and rigorous regulatory oversight sets us apart,” said Dr Schaper.

Healthcare Ventures’ initial raising activities have already attracted attention from investors globally.

The fund first closing is expected in the first half of 2021.