VentureBeat

Venture capitalists pumped eight percent more into companies during the first quarter, but all the action came in healthcare.

Venture capitalists gave 16 percent less to companies in the IT industry, however — they invested less money into software, semiconductors and Internet infrastructure companies. Web 2.0 companies, however, appear to have drawn more money than ever. See table below. Web 2.0 companies are part of the “Information services” category, which saw $722 million, up from $659 million during the first quarter of last year.

David Hamilton covers the reasons behind the record level of healthcare investments. They include the aging baby-boomer generation, which is spending more money on healthcare, continued innovation in the area, and a track record of lucrative returns from investments in the sector.

The data comes from Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young.

Alternative energy and other clean technology companies also saw a boost. Venture capitalists invested $237.0 million into ten “alternative energy” deals, up from $53.8 million in six deals. They invested $54 million into eight “environmental” companies in the first quarter, compared to just $4 million invested in one deal a year ago, the data showed.

California dominated the venture capital activity in the first quarter, representing 44 percent of the nation’s deal flow and 48 percent of the capital invested. The San Francisco Bay Area boomed, gobbling up $2.20 billion, ten percent more than during the previous quarter.

Finally, early-stage investing increased, making up 38 percent of the deals in healthcare, noted Jessica Canning, who has just been appointed director of global research at VentureOne.

Who is Sick? is a new site that lets you know what sort of sicknesses are breaking out in your area.

If you’re suffering a headache or feeling nauseous, it could be related to your environment, and those around you — and it’s helpful to know that. By typing in your zip code, you can see whether anyone else near you has reported similar symptoms. It lets anyone access the site and update sickness information immediately. The company’s founder PT Lee seeded the site with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but has since relied on user submissions.

CDC’s BioSense, which hospitals and public health departments use to detect disease outbreaks, is restricted to use only by officials of those organizations. CDC also has weekly updated flu site. However, there are no other ways to get real-time information about these and other symptoms. So far, as you’ll see in screenshot below, the site tracks the following: fever, headache, muscle ache, runny nose and stomach ache. There’s also a “more symptoms” option and a box where you can describe your symptoms in detail.

This is a great way to help in the defense against possible pandemics like a bird-flu pandemic, however Lee said he is not tracking such symptoms for now, and doesn’t want to. That, ebola, e-coli, AIDS are all being tracked by other sites, and he wanted to track more common sicknesses. Also, the site is vulnerable to scare-mongers, who may spam the site with false reports. Lee told VentureBeat he is limiting each visitor session to five submissions, and is working on a way to track IP addresses, and to produce a community red-flag system, which would let users alert Lee’s team to possible spam. He’s also doing database analysis, looking for suspicious patterns, though admits he’s cleaning up about six hours behind submission times — and has deleted about 30 posts.

Still, we’d encourage Who is Sick to obtain sophisticated tracking and moderation techniques, so that it can be more comprehensive — and track the more serious diseases. That would boost its traffic and make it even more useful.

The self-funded company is based out of Los Angeles, CA.

(This post was written with assistance from Rex Dixon)

A bevy of start-ups are emerging to give people new ways to liberate them from the control of powerful health insurance companies — it’s about time.

Typically, you go to a doctor, and the doctor keeps your records on file and you can’t access them. But now people are demanding more freedom and transparency, and start-ups are responding.

The latest is Revolution Health, the start-up formed several years ago by AOL co-founder Steve Case, but which has been working quietly until its launch today. The company gave us access to the site a few weeks ago, and we’ve played with it. It is extensive, allowing you to build your records, find and compare local doctors, compare insurance companies (we’ve included a partial screenshot at bottom), help with claims and much more — it also wants to compete against the incumbent healthcare information and service portal, WebMD.

In fact, it is doing so much, that we agree with venture capitalist John Steuart, a specialist in healthcare who has looked closely at Revolution Health, when he says he can’t tell where the company plans to focus.

The most interesting Revolution Health appears to be offering — though it hasn’t made clear exactly how — is the ability to own and carry your own electronic health records (an idea Steuart finds worthy of venture backing, if it can be done right). That way, if you travel, or change providers, you can be treated wherever and by whoever you want. Also notable are Revolution Health’s service to find a cheap doctor, so that uninsured can avoid the emergency room. Moreover, it lets you compare insurance costs. This is useful, but it’s not clear how you build a business here (since there are several players in this area now).

Revolution is just the latest entrant, albeit one of the most talked about today, because of Case’s fame.

Other companies helping liberate parts of your personal health records (see good summary of the issue here) are CapMed and iHealthrecord.com. There’s another good summary of the industry in this Business 2.0 story.

Another is MedBillManager, a start-up in Nashville, TN that is run by three people, which gives you tools to track your bills, and a social networking feature that lets you compare insurance and other medical costs against that of other members. It is self-funded. Notably, managers of healthcare software players with competing products, Intuit ($49/year subscription) and SimoHealth (recently acquired by Revolution Health) have subscribed to MedBillManager’s testing version to see how it works, according to MedBillManager’s chief executive, Christopher Parks. Both Intuit and SimoHealth, however, are downloaded software programs instead accessible online, and don’t offer the social networking features. MedBillManager also wants you to be able to manage your records, but we didn’t see clearly how to do this in our test version.

Finally, there’s new start-up Taumed, of San Francisco, which is only related in that provides a way to search and ask for advice online, and find the latest healthcare news. However, it joins a host of competing search engines, in players like Dailystrength (see our story here), Kosmix and Healthline. Taumed tells VentureBeat it is raising a first round of capital.

Separately, the WSJ has a story today about Revolution Health (no link here, because the WSJ requires a subscription, but others covered the launch too), and the response by incumbent site, WebMD.

Revolution Health will offer telephone-consulting and digital-record services free for a year, to those who sign up within 90 days. The company says it eventually will charge $100 or so a year for a subscription to premium services. WebMD, in turn, released some tools today that look similar to those offered by Revolution Health — users will be able to store and maintain health records for free, and join forums about their health issues.