MedCity News INVEST 2025, scheduled for May 20 and 21 at Chicago’s WillisTower, is a boutique healthcare investment conference where healthcare startups, investors, and healthcare stakeholders convene. The startups pitch contest Pitch Perfect is at the center of the conference, with entrepreneurs presenting their approaches to addressing unmet needs or inadequately met needs to a panel of investor judges. One of the judges is Charity Tarn, an investor with Arboretum Ventures.

Tarn is one of three judges for the devices and diagnostics Pitch Perfect track, which focuses on chronic disease management. She will be joined by Jenni Le, an investor and principal with Venture Investors Health Fund, and Ashish Atreja, a professor of IT Business Operations and Gastroenterology at UC Davis Health.

In response to emailed questions she shared her perspective as a healthcare investor and some of the challenges startups face in the current investment landscape.

To review the agenda for INVEST, click here. You can also register here.

What subsector of health tech, medtech or biotech is your firm allocating more investment in 2025 and what’s an area you are moving away from? Why?

The four pillars of our investment thesis include medtech, healthtech, life science tools and diagnostics, and pharma adjacent technologies. Our current portfolio weighs more towards medical devices. We aren’t moving away from our core thesis, but we are taking a fresh look at tech-enabled services and healthcare IT, spaces that we have historically found success in, but have been such dynamic ecosystems. I’m excited about the potential opportunities that will emerge in the next couple of years.

Have you seen any shifts in the way startups seek investment in the past couple of years? 

I think the fundraising environment has been very tough, and financing risk has increased. I think startups have adapted by becoming increasingly capital efficient and are giving extra scrutiny in defining value-driving milestones in anticipation of future funding needs.

Have you seen a shift in healthcare or biopharma strategic investor priorities in recent years?

I think uncertainties in the macro environment may drive priorities to more de-risked investments with more predictable business models, and investments that are more immediately accretive.

What is an example of a portfolio company’s work you are particularly proud of?

I am very proud of the team at SonarMD and what they’ve achieved. Last year was an important year, and the team worked through some tough commercial headwinds and strategic questions that put the company on track to further growth and helping more GI patients manage their symptoms and care. The value-based care world is not easy to navigate!

Photo: DNY59, Getty Images