Researchers tried to calculate the impact of health tech companies. It sent startups into a tizzy

As Johns Hopkins gastroenterologist Simon Mathews has watched scores of digital health upstarts collect hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding in recent years, he’s had one key

question: “If we’re putting in all this money, shouldn’t it be linked to making a difference?” So he and a group of researchers set out to quantify just how much startups actually move the

needle in health care. Armed with data from venture fund Rock Health, they devised a simple “clinical robustness” score: the sum of the number of a startup’s completed clinical trials and

its regulatory filings with the FDA. The results were grim. Relatively few companies, they found, had completed clinical trials. The study didn’t name names. But it has sent health tech

startups into a tizzy, clamoring to know where they stand, researchers told STAT. For companies keenly aware of the competition, that kind of index could be a prime marketing opportunity —

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