What is healthcare ventures and best healthcare ventures?

In the technology market, investment capital is more about ROI. From Silicon Valley to Shanghai, firms make major bets on entrepreneurs and startups dreaming that their portfolio would involve Facebook, Amazon, or Uber.

In certain instances, though, investment funds are managed by entrepreneurs who still earn billions of dollars a year. Healthcare ventures are a few of them, and their aim is to push creativity as well as to make returns.

Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, and Baxter International offer three examples of Healthcare venture firms accelerating progress in Healthcare ventures by investing in startups and providing entrepreneurs the capital and connections to the skills they need to create innovative drugs, inventions, and products.

JOHNSON & JOHNSON

Johnson & Johnson is a Healthcare venture whose portfolio includes consumer products, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. In addition to running an investment fund, the organization has developed startup incubators in 11 cities throughout the United States.

Johnson & Johnson Healthcare venture Innovation has been involved since the 1970s and has spent more than $12 billion in nearly 500 investment rounds. The president of the Fund, Tom Heyman, told Q&A that Johnson & Johnson Innovation has a team of 12 investors distributed around the globe who individually review thousands of investment opportunities each year. The fund invested 13 investments in 2019 and has made six as of July 2020. While Johnson & Johnson has spent billions of dollars in hundreds of firms, Heyman said in his Q&A with the organization that his team is not driven purely by benefit when assessing transactions.

"We don't make acquisitions only to make profits for Johnson & Johnson," said Heyman. "Instead, we make an investment in companies that have technologies, platforms, and business models that are, or could be, strategically important today in one of our sectors in the future. Anything we do needs to be financially stable, but it's about policy first, and everything that follows.

One portfolio firm to watch: Johnson & Johnson Invention engaged in the B-Series and C-Series rounds of Willow, a Mountain View-based company that produced a portable breast pump. Willow received over $100 million in support and newly accepted the current CEO, Laura Chambers, and longtime VP of eBay and General Manager of Airbnb.

AMGEN

Amgen is a biotechnology Healthcare venture corporation that researches and produces drugs to cure specific conditions such as cancer, renal failure, and osteoporosis. In 2014, the organization introduced the Golden Ticket initiative for startups in the life sciences and biotech sectors, which provides two firms with free lab space for a year.

Their fund: Amgen Seed Investments, founded in 2004, invests in pharmaceutical startups and acts as a limited investor in funds that invest in life science firms. According to Crunchbase, Amgen has contributed $200 million to its venture fund and has made 83 investments. Jani Naeve has been the managing director of the fund since 2004 and, in an interview with Amgen, she said that one of the factors the fund has achieved success is its strong association with the scientists of the organization.

"My teammate Gladys Nunez and I manage $625 million in funding and have made more than 70 investments, and we couldn't do that without the scientists," Naeve said. "We helped educate them on venture funds while bringing the scientific point of view that Amgen is so well known to the biotech industry. Scientists are incorporated into what we do and are crucial to helping us find the right direction for businesses we invest in to be effective.

One portfolio firm to watch: Akili Interactive developed the first prescription computer game to combat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The app, Endeavors, was developed by neuroscientists and video game developers for children aged 8-12 and is planned to be used in combination with other therapies. Akili Interactive was formed in 2011 and received $140.9 million in financing.

BAXTER INTERNATIONAL

Baxter Healthcare venture is an International is a specialty product company specialized in intravenous fluids and treatment systems, surgical instruments, and dialysis instruments. The company was founded in 1931 and is located in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield. In 2017, Baxter revealed that it was working with MATTER, a Chicago health technology incubator, to offer tools and experience to support entrepreneurs accelerate their work.

Baxter Ventures is a $200 million equity fund founded in 2011 targeted at early-stage start-ups around the world creating medical technology. According to Baxter, the fund is invested in businesses whose inventions or goods meet unmet health needs and who have a long-term growth opportunity. Its fields of focus cover patient management systems, pharmaceutical technology software, and in-hospital and therapeutic solutions.

Anne E. Sissel, managing director of the Fund, said in a Q&A company that Baxter Ventures is putting up quite a large net because of the company's mission.

"Our goal at Baxter to save and preserve lives inspires the focus of our innovation activities," Sissel said. "In a bigger organization such as Baxter, innovations must be part of the broader goal and policy to justify commitment and emphasis. We must be disciplined and carefully select those opportunities where we think we will have the greatest effect, but understand that every given technology is only one part of the bigger image.

According to Crunchbase, Baxter Ventures Healthcare venture made 16 investments and led six stages, the biggest of which was $41.8 million in Series D for the biopharmaceutical firm Mirna Therapeutics in 2015.

One portfolio firm to watch: Outset is the San Jose, California medical device maker behind Tablo, a lightweight dialysis system built to be less cumbersome and smarter than what is actually on the market. Tablo includes a touch screen control system that automatically transmits data to the cloud which provides Wi-Fi alerts. According to Outset, medical professionals require just hours to learn the ins and outs of the unit, and the FDA has recently licensed it for use at home by patients. Crunchbase data reveals that Outset raised $447.3 million in support.