After 2021’s $9.9bn outlier year for medtech venture money, on the surface the $7.4bn raised in 2022 looks like a return to normality, with last year’s tally on a par with the $7.3bn raised in 2020. But what might come as a concern is the huge fall in both the amount invested and the number of investments seen in the fourth quarter.

So far, so average. In the first half of 2022 private medical device companies raised $4.4bn in venture funding, putting the year’s total on course to fall neatly between what was raised in the past two years.

The picture is very different when it comes to the other main means of raising cash available to private groups: IPOs. Only three medtechs have braved the falling markets, and the biggest such deal, the spinout of Bausch & Lomb, priced at a heavy discount.

Accelerated by the Covid pandemic, when telehealth and disease management apps came into their own, digital health is sparking great interest from venture funders. Some, like HLM Ventures, specialise in digital health, attracted by the speed of development and lower regulatory risk versus conventional devices.

But not all VCs have been won over to the digital world. France’s Truffle Capital eschews this space entirely, solely backing developers of implanted medical devices. Intriguingly, though these two investors have taken opposing stances, their understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the digital world align perfectly.

Biofourmis, a startup developing digital therapeutics and artificial intelligence to remotely monitor patients, said its valuation hit $1.3 billion after raising a $300 million Series D funding round led by General Atlantic.