Digital and telehealth solutions took off during COVID-19 and industry observers expect them to advance still further in the coming year. Coupling enhanced patient experience with rich opportunities to use associated data to enhance product development and health care practice, benefits should accrue to industry, health care practitioners, health systems and patients alike.

Better Therapeutics is developing prescription digital therapeutics for behavioral therapy to address the root causes of cardiometabolic disease.

EcoR1 and Casdin/Corvex took their second and third special purpose acquisition corporations public. Also, Ionis sold notes to buy back older notes and fund operations as it cut 70% of Akcea’s staff. In venture capital, ValenzaBio raised $70m and RA boosted Metagenomi’s series A to $75m.

With minimally invasive left-heart procedures like transcatheter aortic valve replacement becoming increasingly safe and commonplace, attention has turned to procedure-associated brain injury from showers of emboli. Several medtech start-ups are developing devices that could protect patients’ brains during not only TAVR, but also surgical aortic valve replacement, atrial fibrillation ablation and other left-heart procedures.