New England’s health care sector was a rare bright spot for venture investing in 2016, growing 11 percent while other industries saw a significant decline in the amount of new money coming into startups and privately held companies.

The figures, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and CB Insights, further underscores the boom in biotech and pharmaceutical investment that has converged on the Boston area in recent years.

Health care companies in New England raised a combined $3.48 billion in 2016, up from $3.13 billion in 2015, according to the firms’ most recent MoneyTree Report. That increase stood apart from a decline in investing in health care and technology companies elsewhere in the United States.

“Boston and Cambridge is the highest concentration and strongest individual cluster in biotech, bio­pharma, and life sciences investing, and that general trend is continuing,’’ said Alexis Borisy, a partner at Boston’s Third Rock Ventures.

Nationally, venture investing across all industries declined about 20 percent, to $58.6 billion in 2016, the MoneyTree report said.

New England-based companies captured about $6.2 billion in 2016, down about 11 percent from 2015. The region’s tech sector raised $2.37 billion last year, down 26 percent from 2015, the report said.

MoneyTree researchers said those downward trends reflect a reality check for some of the “exuberant’’ private investments seen in 2015, as well as a continuing soft market for initial public offerings. IPOs reached an eight-year low in 2016, according to research from investment manager Renaissance Capital.

“Yes, it was a tougher year in terms of deal activity and funding,’’ CB Insights chief executive Anand Sanwal said. “But versus 2014, which we can call a more normal period, 2016 compares quite favorably.’’

Against that sobering backdrop, the strong investment hauls by New England health care companies stand out even more.

The surge was characterized by eye-catching investments for such startups as Cambridge’s Moderna Therapeutics Inc., which raised $451.4 million for its work on cellular therapies, and Boston’s Intarcia Therapeutics Inc., which raised a total of $421 million to develop a drug-filled implantable pump.

But there can be too much of a good thing, and some biotech experts have worried for the past few years that the sector may be overheating. Political pressure on the industry has added to those concerns, with President-elect Donald Trump sending drug stocks down last week after declaring that pharmaceutical companies were “getting away with murder’’ on drug prices.

“There are, of course, jitters out there from uncertainty about what is coming out of Washington,’’ Borisy said. “Like lots of people, everyone’s just looking to see what happens.’’

But Bruce Booth, a partner at Cambridge’s Atlas Venture, said the biotech market’s fundamentals remain strong. A relatively poor IPO performance in 2016 stood out largely because it followed several years of historically high numbers of public debuts for the sector, he said.

“It’s amazing how short people’s memories are,’’ Booth said. “This is still a very healthy environment for taking companies public, and when you have that sort of prolonged, almost secular trend reinforcing itself, you then have real competition on the M&A front.’’

Curt Woodward can be reached at curt.woodward@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @curtwoodward.