Venture Financing Of Pediatric Innovation – Why The Time Is Right

by Gita Gupta

Coauthors: Dr.James Wall MD, Julia Schaletzky PhD, Nick Triantos

Medical Devices & Digital Health

At NextStep Ventures, a seed-stage fund, focused on the $700B pediatric healthcare market, we believe the time is right for venture investment in pediatric innovation.
Despite NIH spending of over $4B per year on pediatric research, there are high unmet needs in pediatrics because turning research discoveries into clinical interventions and treatments depends upon private sector investment. Child Health remains an under-invested area of venture capital, with profitable business opportunities often overlooked for a couple of reasons – one, Medicare reimbursement is a driving force in the US healthcare system, and two, venture capital investment tends to prioritize large markets which are typically adult markets, rather than the smaller market of the pediatric population aged 22 and under.
In this session, we discuss the perfect storm of events that makes this the right time to have a positive impact on the high unmet needs in pediatrics, while creating profitable businesses. We talk about our investment thesis and how we believe it’s possible for venture firms to generate top quartile venture returns for investors, while also improving the quality of life for children.