You can achieve a dual vision: improve the impact on people’s health, and also build liquidity for your company. The road to successful medical device technologies that win on both fronts is possible—with some key considerations.

There is no doubt that gaining traction requires both clinical and regulatory competency. What’s not on your radar may cause the delays and pitfalls that often keep companies from hitting milestones.

There are other less top of mind elements to consider as well.  These can be effectively leveraged in the device development process to increase chances of success:

  • Early validation of market desirability
  • Human factors & usability
  • Manufacturing preparation

Early engagement and integration of these activities has a definite payoff. New technologies can be brought to market expediently, without sacrificing safety or effectiveness.

Doug Hiemstra from Triple Ring Technologies moderated the panel. The video below is an introduction to our panelists:

Shannon Clark, CEO at UserWise
Noreen King, President & CEO at Evolve Manufacturing
Howard Edelman, Chairman Medical Devices & Digital Health Screening Committee, Life Science Angels; Entrepreneur-in-Residence at UCSF

The panel suggests that there is no trade-off between doing well and doing good. The simple idea – that you can do well by doing good – has actually created exciting new opportunities and has given many businesses a distinct competitive advantage.

Many people  believe that “doing good” means making less money and that there is always a trade-off between impact and financial return. Frankly, this is not the case. In fact, this is the only business model that will survive.

The competitive edge: the growing impact of manufacturing

In the following video, the panel shares tips for designing the right product and preparing for regulatory requirements and manufacturing to build successful products.

Go-to-market strategies: when is it good enough?

The panel shares that your go-to market strategy must be comprehensive enough to be valuable, yet agile enough to be updated as you get customer feedback.

In the below video, the panel shared common hurdles with doing well and doing good.

Summary

The panel offers last takeaways for companies:

Howard: Raise as much money as you can.

Noreen: Develop a plan that includes everything that it will take to get there. This includes all the manufacturing stuff, not just the marketing.

Shannon: Human error isn’t a black box. It’s something you can take control of and eliminate through design. Don’t eliminate it through training. Don’t eliminate it by changing the instructions. You need to bake risk reduction into the design of your medical product. By really thinking about that as early on as you possibly can, it will save  investment later on in the process.

Doug: Solve the big problems first and fail fast.