With Fitbit and Mindbody going public, who is next?

RockHealth polled investors who said Jawbone, Practice Fusion and Health Catalyst are likely to IPO

(Updated with comment from Health Catalyst)

Last year, funding for companies in the healthtech space took off like a rocket. It more than doubled year-to-year. By the second quarter of the year it had already surpassed the totals for 2013, and in the end rose 125% to a total of $4.1 billion. That is significantly higher than the 30% growth rate the space saw in 2013. 

Already this year we have started seeing some of the payoff to that, with two companies in this space already filing for IPOs, Fitbit and Mindbody, both of which have said that they are looking to raise $100 million in their offerings.

It stands to reason that more will follow; the only question is: who? Rock Health, an accelerator-turned-VC fund, asked 43 investors to answer that exact question. 

Here are the four companies in the healthtech space that are most likely to go public this year:

Jawbone

Founded in 1999, Jawbone is a wearables company, and the maker of the Jawbone UP health tracker, as well as the Jambox, Bluetooth wireless headsets, and noise-canceling headphones.

In April, the company completed a $300 million funding from BlackRock, giving it around $725 million in total funding and valuing it at roughly $3 billion.

Like Fitbit, Jawbone would be choosing the right moment to go public, as wearables, mostly due to the Apple Watch, are about to finally have their moment.

In all, 19.6 million wearables were shipped in 2014, a number that will more than double, going up to 45.7 million units, in 2015. By 2019, total shipment volumes are forecast to reach 126.1 million units. That means it will have a five-year compound annual growth rate of 45.1%. Translation: you're going to start seeing a lot more wearables very soon.

20% of those polled by RockHealth said Jawbone would IPO this year.

A spokesperson for Jawbone would not comment on the report, or any of Jawbone's potential IPO plans.

Practice Fusion

Practice Fusion is an electronic health record (EHR) service. The company facilitates electronic connections between providers and their pharmacies, labs, imaging centers, billers and health plans. It also offers Insight, a tool built by its data scientists to visualize health trends from aggregated, de-identified data.

Founded in 2005, Practice Fusion has connections to over 70,000 pharmacies, has 420 hospital and independent diagnostic laboratory partners,  130 hospital and independent radiology chains, 10 billing software and billing service partners and it work with the top 25 life-science pharmaceutical manufacturers and over 175 prescription brands

It facilitates over 1 million lab transactions per month, over 3 million e-prescriptions sent per month and over 5 million patient visits a month.

Practice Fusion has raised $149 million to date from investors that included SharesPost Investment Management, Citizen.VC, Qualcomm Ventures, ARTIS Ventures, Longitude Capital, Band of Angels, Industry Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Of those polled, 19% said that the company was likely to have its IPO in 2015.

A spokesperson for Practice Fusion would not comment on the report.

Health Catalyst

Health Catalyst is a healthcare data warehousing and analytics company, which creates software for hospitals manage their processes.

The company has two product lines: it provides data warehousing, pulling in data from dozens of sources, such as labs and patient satisfaction surveys. It then provides analytics and outcomes to help healthcare organizations of all sizes improve the clinical, financial, and operational reporting and analysis needed for population health and accountable care. 

The company has raised $152 million, including a $70 million round in March. Investors inc;ude Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Sorenson Capital, CHV Capital and Partners HealthCare.

15% of those polled said the company was likely to go public in 2015.

"We at Health Catalyst are definitely working to prepare ourselves to be a successful public company in the future.  We are focused on ensuring that we have the size, scale, capability and infrastructure in place to ensure that we can succeed long-term as a public company before we go public," Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst, told VatorNews.

"We hope to be ready to be a successful public company within the next 18 months to three years."

Proteus

Proteus Digital Health is a digital medicine company that develops digital products that collect and aggregate various behavioral, physiological and therapeutic metrics, such as medication adherence, heart rate, sleep patterns, physical activity, and stress levels. It then imputs this data into personal management tools delivered to the mobile devices of consumers.

The company’s products include digital medicines; Helius, a healthshare solution that keeps families in tune with those who need care; and wearable sensor-based tools.

Founded in 2001, Proteus has raised $277 million in funding, including $172 million in two rounds in 2014 that were among the largest healthcare deals of the year. 

Of those polled, 10% said that Proteus was a likely IPO candidate this year. 

Others that also wound up on the list included American Well, RedBrick, Flatiron, ZocDoc, 23andMe, Doximity, Lumeris, Sharecare and Welltok. 

The two 2015 healthtech IPOs

All of this is pure speculation, of course, but we do know that there are two companies that definitely are going to become publicaly traded this year.

Fresh off making its first ever acquisition, scooping up digital health and fitness platform FitStar in March, and then adding $17.8 million in funding to its coffers, wearable device manufacturer Fitbit filed for its IPO earlier this month.

Founded in 2007, Fitbit currently sells six connected health and fitness trackers. It raised just under $84 million in venture funding, from investors that included Qualcomm Ventures, SAP Ventures, SoftBank Capital,  Foundry Group and True Ventures.

Mindbody, a studio management software for fitness studios, including yoga, pilates, personal training, dance, martial arts, spas and salons, followed up with its filing less than a week later.

The company is cloud-based software provider in the health, wellness and beauty industries. The company makes it money off of businesses, which pay a monthly fee to use the software. 

Mindbody currently has 42,000 local business subscribers on it platform in 124 countries and territories employing over 250,000 practitioners. It raised around $109 million in funding, most recently a $50 million round in February of 2014.

VatorNews has reached out to Proteus for additional comment, and we will update this story if we hear back from those companies on their future plans. 

(Image source: huffingtonpost.com)