We're working on a series studying Digital Health and venture capital, and why it's hard for the pharma or medtech industry to develop global-ready applications that can impact patient lives. We're interested in the VC voice here, or M&A experts in the category, but also founders if you're struggling to raise for it.

Global digital health fails when regulation, data gravity, and go to market timing are treated as afterthoughts. From a founder lens, the hardest part is not the science. It is building software that survives regulatory fragmentation, clinical validation, and payer economics at the same time. Teams often prove efficacy in one market, then hit a wall when data residency, interoperability standards, and reimbursement models change country by country. VCs see this as execution risk because timelines stretch beyond typical fund horizons. On the M&A side, acquirers discount value when compliance and localization are not engineered into the core architecture early. The winners treat global readiness as a product requirement from day one, not a Phase Two expansion problem. Albert Richer, Founder, WhatAreTheBest.com

In my clinic, software only matters if it changes what I do at 8 a.m. and what my patient feels at 8 p.m. I found a study showing U.S. digital health pulled in $3.0B across 122 deals in one quarter. The average round rose to about $24.4M, after sitting near $15.5M the quarter before. Here is why global ready apps stall. Evidence does not travel well. Neither does reimbursement. Data rules change at every border, and EHR integration is still a fight. Investors are not buying "engagement" anymore. They want utilization, margins, and a clean path to payment. That same study logged $6.4B over 245 deals in the first half of the year, so the bar is higher, not lower. M&A is also pulling teams off the fundraising treadmill, with 102 healthtech deals in the first half.