How Catalyst Health Ventures Found A Sweet Spot In Early-Stage MedTech

InnovationVenture CapitalHow Catalyst Health Ventures Found A Sweet Spot In Early-Stage MedTechByShimite Obialo,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. CEO of CapCure, a fundraising platform for health & wellness companiesFollow AuthorJun 01, 2026, 09:49am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Darshana Zaveri and Josh Phillips, co-Managing Partners Courtesy of Catalyst Health VenturesOn a Saturday night, at a party, Josh Phillips’s phone lit up with a text message from one of his CEOs. We just saved a life. Attached was a photo of a blood clot, pulled from a patient’s heart because of a device his firm Catalyst Health Ventures had helped bring into the world. The patient was alive because of it.Another company in the portfolio, Epitel, a wearable wireless EEG which monitors electrical activity in the brain, shared a testimonial that they had a woman break down in tears because a small sensor placed on her scalp had finally caught what doctors had missed for two decades. She was having seizures, and she could at last be treated for epilepsy.These are the stories Phillips and his co-founder and co-Managing Partner Darshana Zaveri, reach for first when you ask them why they do this. Not the multiples, not the exits. The patient. Since 2008, the two of them have been writing some of the first checks into unproven medical devices and doing it in a corner of healthcare that much of the venture industry has spent the last decade backing away from.The Early-Stage SqueezeMedtech, or medical device innovation has traditionally been an underserved sector inside of the healthcare investment vertical. And over the last several years, it has become even more difficult for the early-stage segment. Venture funding peaked at $22.7 billion in 2021, then fell hard, bottoming near $12.9 billion in 2023, according to PitchBook, before clawing its way back to...