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Venture Capitalists Wary of Regulatory Impact on Health Care

December 04, 2008

A Duke Clinical Research Institute team including Kevin Schulman, director of Fuqua's Health Sector Management Program, and Fuqua alumni Larry Diener and Ana Valverde, has found that federal public policies can have an important impact on the flow of venture capital that helps fuel innovation in biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other health care sectors.  Their research was published online December 2 by the journal Health Affairs.

The team surveyed twenty venture capital fund managers, they found evidence that changes in the level of regulatory and reimbursement risk have "a major impact on the investment strategies of venture capital funds. Approximately two-thirds of respondents said that increases in risk would lead them to shift investments within or across health care sectors or to reduce health care investments altogether," the researchers report. "Therefore, given venture capital’s important contributions to innovation in health care, policymakers should make a concerted effort to better understand the link between their policy levers and the venture capital industry," they add.