This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

  Today in Health it, this story is Digital Health Company smash another funding record in the first half of the year. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health it a channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current and engaged. Thursday, tomorrow at 1:00 PM Eastern Time, I'm doing a webinar on the state of health it.

I'd love to have you on the call. I'll be taking about 30 minutes to talk about the state of health. It taken straight from our interviews, and we will be taking questions for at least 20 minutes during the webinar, trying to facilitate a discussion more than a talking head presentation. I'd love to have you join me.

Sign up today at this week, health.com/. Register. Alright, here's today's story. This comes from Med City News. Digital health companies smash another funding record raising $14.7 billion in the first half of the year. And I'm just gonna go to excerpts and then we'll do the so what And the first half of the year, companies raised a total of 14.7 billion across 372 deals, according to a report released today by Rock Health.

Some of the biggest funding rounds so far this year include Diet App Noom, which raised 540 million direct to consumer Startup Row ro, which raised 500 million in March, drug discovery startup in Citro, which raised 400 million. In March as well. More companies plan big exits, but returns decline while more companies continue to line up for big exits, the picture looks a little more different than it did earlier this year.

And a waning number of targets to take public by rock health's count. There are 39 SPACs actively searching for healthcare targets and 47 highly capitalized digital health startups, meaning sharp elbows are likely to emerge as they compete for companies attention. All right. What's the so what here, and I'm gonna talk about this from the health system provider perspective, and I'm reminded of something I learned earlier in my career when I participated in a turnaround situation.

Companies don't go out of business because they aren't making a profit. They go out of business when they run out of cash. Cash is king in the startup world. Don't get overly focused on profits of the companies you are investing in and make no mistake. , that is what you're doing. When you purchase a product from one of the funded startups, focus on their cash flow.

How far will their cash flow take them and what are their plans to get more cash to sustain operations? Healthcare startups take a long time to get off the ground. They burn a lot of fuel to get off the ground. And fuel for a startup is cash. Don't invest unless you know they have a plan to keep fuel in the plane.

Until they get off the ground. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to Podcast. Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. You get the picture. We are everywhere.

We wanna thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. VMware Hillrom, Starbridge Advisors, McAfee and Aruba Networks. Thanks for listening. That's all for doubt.