Tag Archives: Medical Device Marketing

Uncategorized

Perfecting the Strategic Pivot

Set up

Several clients either have or are about to pivot their post-commercial product offering in a new direction. Strategic pivots are rare with post-commercial start-ups.

Typically, the pivot is driven by market forces.  These market forces can create a real sense of urgency, almost a state of panic, to execute the pivot. Hopefully, the pivot is not a reboot or restart of the business.  If that is the case, it is an entirely different situation than I am writing about today.

Historically, clients experiencing low revenue growth are missing one or two key elements that are readily fixable. If a pivot is required, then a more thorough assessment will be required to identify all the elements that need to be pivoted.

Before you commit to a pivot, you must audit every assumption or finding you have made from the original market scan.  The grass may look greener on the other side of the fence, but until you dig in the dirt, you won’t know the quality of the soil.  Here is a 10-point checklist you should consider during your pre-pivot planning process.

Checklist:

  1.   Is the current Product* optimized for the new target?
  2.   Is the current reimbursement still valid?
  3.   Will new regulatory efforts be required?
  4.   Will additional clinical data be required?
  5.   Is the new target’s persona significantly different from the old target?
  6.   Will the product messaging need to change in support of the a new persona?
  7.   Will the new target require a new pricing strategy or price change +/-?
  8.   Is your account targeting method still valid?
  9.   Are there different competitors in the new target?
  10.   Is your sales organization capable of accessing and supporting the new target?

This list is generalized; I encourage you to brainstorm your own list.

Failure to embrace the complete reality of the pivot can leave your company in a weaker long-term position.  Incomplete pivots will always cause disruption in realizing the true potential that the new pivot holds.

Lesson (s)

  1. When considering a pivot, conduct a holistic audit of the changes that will be required.
  2. Do proper (structured) VOC work to understand the nature of the new customer, new stakeholders, competition, methods, purchasing behaviors, price tolerance, etc.
  3. Just because it intuitively makes sense that the environment will be similar, do the work to make sure.

*Product, spelled with a capital “P,” represents the entire product or service, including, but not limited to, Indications, instructions for use, packaging, training, disposal of, and shipping methods.

“Experience is what you get right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker, MBA

Tim is the Principal Strategist for The Experia® Group, LLC, which provides expertise and experience to medical device companies.  An author, INSIGHT:33 lessons learned in medical device marketing, available on Amazon.

One-on-one and team coaching are also available.

www.theexperiagroup.com

© 2024, The Experia® Group, LLC

 

Uncategorized

New Market Entry: A perspective for medical devices; 10 criteria and 15 watch-outs

Prelude

I have had several discussions with companies recently that are wanting to enter new markets. We start the discussion, and they want to talk about regulatory requirements and pricing. Both topics are critical to entering a new market; these two topics and about 50 more are all critical to first, choosing the next right market, and secondly, developing a winning strategy and creating a tactical plan to make it happen.

Entering a new market will likely consume significant resources. Therefore, it is worth taking the right amount of time to determine if you will succeed. In my 40+ years of medical device marketing, I have seen many entry attempts go sideways. The great majority of the time it was related to a poor job of upfront discovery.

I believe that an integrated market entry strategy that includes: a mini-high level strategic plan, strategies for all the critical to success elements (as determined by a gap analysis between the current market and the new market), and a tactical plan with a budget, are needed to ensure success.

Understanding

I get the desire to just start. I am a big fan of Starting Ugly. But even Chris Krimitsos suggests that you should have all the basics understood before, “Starting Ugly.” Understanding the market you are headed into is not an option, it is a requirement. I am an advocate of doing only as much research and discovery as needed.

Set-up 

Right after you set your high-level goals and objectives, create a list of criteria with metrics. Use real numbers if you can. If you can’t, develop a scale. Declare the pass/fail metrics before you do the discovery work.

 

Here is a sample of potential criteria:

      1. Legal requirements cannot be overly burdensome.
      2. Regulatory requirements cannot be overly burdensome.
      3. The market must be large enough to sustain/justify the investment.
      4. The product(s) brought to market must resolve a significant unmet need in a way that is attractive to the physicians.
      5. The product(s) brought to the market are differentiated from the competition.
      6. The value proposition and corresponding price must afford profitability.
      7. The cost of customer acquisition cannot exceed that that would allow profitability.
      8. Your current brand must be perceived positively.
      9. The basis of competition must allow you a sustainable competitive advantage.
      10. Availability of trained resources to fill the need.

Each company will have unique concerns that surface during discovery. These will need criteria written as well. Scores and weights will need to be assigned to those, critical to success metrics in achieving your goals.

During discovery make sure that you challenge every assumption you would make if you were bringing a new product into your current market.

Watch-outs

Watch out areas include, but are not limited to:

      1. How the un-met is solved today
      2. Distribution
      3. Fulfillment
      4. Sales process
      5. Contracting
      6. Access to the end-users
      7. Time to close
      8. Sampling guidelines
      9. Preference for performing in-servicing
      10. Incentives
      11. Bundling practices
      12. Stocking practices
      13. Evaluation requirements
      14. Conference conduct/expectations
      15. Grant processes and rules

Lessons:

      1. Actively studying the market is not a waste of time nor money.
      2. Understanding the market is not an option, it is a must-do.
      3. Take careful aim before pulling the trigger, this way you won’t waste ammunition (cash and time).
      4. All assumptions are traps

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia Group, a consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success.

One-on-One or team coaching is available.

Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30+ years of experience can contribute to your success. [email protected]

www.theexperiagroup.com.

© 2021, The Experia Group, LLC

Uncategorized

FOCUS is power, when the lens is set at the correct angle

Prelude

In recent weeks, I have had discussions with three potential clients about their shot-gun approach to launching their new technology platforms. My advice was the same for each of them, FOCUS is power.

Pick the right channel, or product, or therapy to go after, and then apply all your assets to entering that market segment. The return question, ‘how do I know which is the ‘right product, channel, or segment?’ 

 

Set-up 

A fourth potential client had it all figured out and was just looking for confirmation and a bit of help in doing it. He wanted to start with segmenting the market for his technology platform. This top-down-market approach is not the only approach, but it is the one that will more often than not, put you on the pathway to successfully developing the first right product and developing a strong go-to-market strategy.

Understanding the market, or sector, or sub-market that you are in is never a luxury, it is essential. 

If you are not sure which way to go or which product to commercialize then immerse yourself into the market. 

This is particularly of value when you have developed a technology platform that eventually could serve every segment of your target market. Before you invest in the first new product take the time to do a full market assessment.

 

How do I know which is the right first product?

Follow this high-level process: (note: there are many sub-steps and significant effort implied within each step).

Step 1: Perform a high-level market scan

Step 2: Establish acceptance criteria for selecting the segment, this will be unique to your company.

Step 3: Map the relevant populations, map the disease(s), map the therapies, map the buying processes, map the projected patient journey, for each possible segment.

Step 4: Review the information from step 3. Retire segments that clearly do not have a chance of meeting the entry criteria.

Step 5: Treat each of the remaining segments as a singular opportunity. Conduct Opportunity Assessments based on the product you have identified for each segment.

Step 6: Compare and contrast the Opportunity Assessments (discussed in an early post or in Lesson 22 in Insight: 33 lessons learned in Medical Device Marketing available on Amazon).

Step 7: Select and commit.

If these steps sound like a ton of work, they are. Is there a way to cheat ahead and get things moving while you finish the work? Of course, you could deploy a Monte Carlo method, however, you still have to collect the information needed for the first three steps before you run a qualitative simulation.

Once you have these pieces in place, then you need to recruit 3-5 true experts in these types of assessments and or in the market segments they seem to have the ability to meet your criteria.

Give them the data and let them apply their intuition to fill in the gaps. During a day-long interactive process, you come to an understanding of all their points of view. If consensus is possible, even better. These types of processes are directionally accurate about 80% of the time.  

With the finding of the group, get started on defining the product concept using appropriate VOC techniques.

But don’t stop the process. In parallel continue to define the alternate possibilities. If any of the assumptions that were used to reach the findings prove to be incorrect, adjust.

The narrower the focus, the deeper you can go into the customer’s true unmet need. The deeper into the unmet need, the higher the probability that you have a commercially viable product.

What if we don’t figure it out and just pick one and go for it?

That certainly is one way of doing it, it has worked for others. But more often than not, it results in costly re-directs, failed launches, a loss in investor confidence, and a host of lesser issues. Time and cash are the critical aspects of any project.

The narrower the focus, the deeper you can go into the customer’s true unmet need. The deeper into the unmet need, the higher the probability that you have a commercially viable product.

It is all about risk and capital. 

Being intentional about the decision you make and the desired outcome you want, is a whole lot better than wandering about looking for something you haven’t even defined. A worthwhile read to get your mind around the process for sorting out the critical few, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. While I don’t agree with everything that is advocated in this book; I do agree that focusing on the critical few is far better than trying to do everything and just hoping something works.

Lessons:

  1. Actively studying the market is not a waste of time nor money.
  2. Understanding the market is not an option, it is a must-do.
  3. Take careful aim before pulling the trigger, this way you won’t waste ammunition (cash and time).
“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia Group, a consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success.

One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact, The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30+ years of experience can contribute to your success.  [email protected]

Available on Amazon

© 2021, The Experia Group, LLC

Uncategorized

January 6th, 2021 the FDA released the Safer Technologies Program [STeP], implications for medical device marketers[1]

Prelude

With the creation of the STeP process the FDA finally, after 45-years, signals that they are proactively trying to fill the implied mandate from Congress to protect the US population by ensuring that safety is proactively promoted in the medical device space.

Set-up 

Safety has always been a prime motivator for change within the human population.  When I think about the motivators for physicians to change their purchasing (use) behaviors I reflect on a model that we have all seen before,  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Modifying Maslow’s labels for the five levels to those of a physician’s we might see something like this.  Of course, there are more and different ways of saying them, but essentially this is what motivates physicians to buy or try new technology.

The STeP Process

The STeP process allows the FDA to expedite the review of devices that have the potential to significantly improve safety.  If you are defining a device that will:

  • Reduce the occurrence of a known serious adverse event
  • Reduce the incidence of a known failure mode
  • Reduce a known use-related hazard or use error
  • Improve the safety of another device or intervention

You should factor in the STeP time and cost savings into the justification for proceeding with the R&D project.  Having your product designated as a STeP device has real messaging and PR potential.  More importantly, as you consider how to prioritize competing products for your new product road map, the STeP designation should provide additional consideration.

Note: The FDA has prioritized Breakthrough Technology above the STeP program for resource allocation.  Breakthrough Technology program is mandated by Congress.

Conclusion

Yes, the STeP program is significant to medical device marketers.  To learn more visit [email protected]

Lessons:

  1. Know the regulations so you can get the most out of your partnership with the FDA
  2. Patient safety is not assumed, it must be advocated for by every department and person, the FDA just made that advocacy easier for you.
  3. Scan the grand environment constantly for changes that can help and sometimes detract from your product line success.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia® Group, a consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com.

Contact, The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30+ years of experience can contribute to your success.  [email protected]

© 2021, The Experia® Group, LLC

[1] MED DEVICE ONLINE, Mark Durivage, January 25, 2021

Uncategorized

Live Case Presentations, more or less relevant in today’s World of medical device marketing?

Prelude

Before we look at the title question let me declare some personal bias.

  • Because of what I have seen over the last 40 years, I am now and have always been an advocate for patient safety.
  • I believe in regulatory control over the medical device industry, so I have never cut regulatory corners. I must admit that there were times when I used those regulations to my advantage.
  • I am not a regulatory compliance professional.

Set-up 

Live case presentations at major medical conferences can provide a huge momentum surge for a new product or technique if all goes well.  If things don’t go well, then the opposite is true.  High business risk, high business rewards or penalties.

 

There has been an allowance in the regulations that prevent the promotion of new medical devices without proper regulatory approvals, going back decades, that allowed for the promotion of pre-clearance and pre-approval devices. This allowance was the recruitment of investigation sites and investigators for IDE studies.  Due to the liberal use of this allowance, the FDA issued draft guidance in 2014 with the ultimate non-binding guidance document released in 2019.[1]

This guidance document, from my perspective, recommends some really commonsense requirements:

  • Ensure the patient is not exposed to extra-risk.
  • Ensure the integrity of the study.
  • To the best of your ability foresee the use of live case demonstrations and make them integral to the study plan.
  • Declare your intentions, in grave detail, to the FDA during the initial IDE application and then provide additional information to the application as more details are available.
  • Communicate the clinical results of those live case-patients to the FDA as required.
  • If there is an adverse event report that within 10-days. 

Are live case still relevant today?

With the increased regulatory scrutiny and the lack of live case event theaters (almost all congress going to virtual formats), one might think that conducting live cases for marketing purposes (investigator recruitment) may no longer be worth it.

Personally, I believe that they are more relevant than ever.  Whether you go through the work with your regulatory team to do it pre-clearance or pre-approval is really a question of your ability to recruit investigators and the belief that your expert clinician can safely perform a novel procedure under the light and cameras.

Because of COVID-19, the medical device marketing World will be forever changed.  Will live Congresses come back, most certainly.  Will the virtual World of medical device marketing ever return to its former practices, no.  With these two realizations pre-recorded or rebroadcasted live cases will be even more important as digital content. Content that is by its very nature on demand.  This convenience and lower cost type of education, branding, and promotion of new technology will remain a popular option.

 Lessons:

  1. Know the rules so that you can comply with regulations
  2. Patient safety is not assumed, it must be advocated for from every department and person
  3. It is okay to play the long game with your reputation and the safety of the patients that you serve, if your Management team wants short-term results at the expense of your core beliefs, well……………

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia® Group, a consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success.

One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact, The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30+ years of experience can contribute to your success.  [email protected]

© 2021, The Experia® Group, LLC

[1] Live Case Presentations During Investigational Device Exemption (ISE) Trials. US FDA, July 11, 2019.

Lesson

Does Marketing have a role to play in Postmarket Surveillance? for medical devices

Prelude

The core focus of the EU MDRs is Postmarket surveillance [PMS], with the recent guidance document, TIR 20416:2020 reinforces this quite clearly[1]. The goals of PMS are:

  1. Monitoring medical device safety and performance
  2. Meeting regulatory requirements
  3. Contributing to lifecycle management

To achieve these goals the guidance document wants manufacturers to:

  1. Actively and systematically gather data
  2. Record and analyze relevant data
  3. Focus on quality, safety, and performance
  4. Engage in PMS data gathering and, more importantly, analysis as a lifecycle activity
  5. Use this data to draw conclusions regarding quality, safety, and performance
  6. Modulate rigor of PMS activities based on the risk class

Further, the guidance states what is to be done with the collected data:

  1. To update the benefit-risk determination and to improve the risk management as referred to in Chapter 1 Annex I;
  2. To update the design and manufacturing information, the instructions for use. and the labeling;
  3. To update the clinical evaluation;
  4. To update the summary of safety and clinical performance referred to in Article 32;
  5. For the identification of needs for preventive, corrective, or field safety corrective action;
  6. For the identification of options to improve the usability, performance, and safety of the device;
  7. When relevant, to contribute to the PMS of other devices; and
  8. To detect and report trends in accordance with Article 88.

Set-up 

So, does Marketing or Product management play a role in PMS? Well look at it this way, if you don’t, then you are in for some surprises.   Just look at the concepts in the lists above [bolded], do you currently play a role with regards to these concepts? 

What role should we play?

At the very least, you as a marketer need to be aware of, and involved with, any PMS findings that might impact your product line or device.

I got involved with the design of the PMS process and reviewed every Incident Investigation. Communication to the field was only a small part of the role I always played. 

The only thing worst than not having a formal PMS process is not knowing that you need one.  

The PMS process should not be feared or viewed as a necessary evil but as an opportunity to better satisfy your customer and provide a safer product to the field.

Two types of data collection are required, proactive and reactive. As a marketer you need to support quality or customer service in writing and interrupting: 

Proactive data from-

  1. Surveys
  2. Questionnaires
  3. Clinician user interviews
  4. The use or membership in registries
  5. PM clinical follow-up studies (if you have to do them make them worthwhile as a promotional opportunity
  6. Monitor the market environment for activity by competitors

Reactive data from-

  1. Complaints
  2. Service reports
  3. Maintenance reports
  4. Unsolicited observations from all stakeholder (good and bad)

All this data should be feedback to your new product development teams regularly.

Conclusion:

You must, as a marketer, be involved with the PMS process!

Lessons:

  1. Make the regulatory processes work for you.
  2. If you are acting as a customer advocate get involved with every aspect of your product line.
  3. You are responsible for protecting the brand, PMS is a great early warning system when the brand is in jeopardy.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia® Group, a consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. 

One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact, The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30+ years of experience can contribute to your success. [email protected]

© 2021,  The Experia® Group, LLC

  [1] Risk-based Postmarket Surveillance In The Age Of EU MDR: Incident Investigation, Jayet Moon, December 11, 2020.  Med Device Online.

 

Uncategorized

To ensure a successful new medical device product launch start early with a marketing MINDSET

Set up

I have been approached recently by several start-up companies to assist in launching their New Medical Devices. All of them have worked incredibly hard on developing their technology. Brilliant scientists, physicians, and inventors, they genuinely have done great work, some spending more than five years on getting ready for their launch. More often than not, they are not prepared, for a variety of reasons, but at the core is that they didn’t have anyone with a Marketing Mindset performing the upstream marketing role.

But are they ready for their launch?

Have you put the building blocks in place?

Based on my observations of nearly 40 years commercializing medical devices, here is what I have learned. To successfully launch a new product, you have to have applied a Marketing Mindset from the very beginning. Let’s look at the upstream process steps in marketing a great new medical device.

Process notes:
    • Voice of the Customer (VOC) is the only way to validate the problem and the solution.
    • VMO = Vision, Mission, Objectives, well documented.
    • Five core documents are: (there are more, but if you don’t have these five, you are at risk of failure)
        1. Clinical need statement
        2. Product positioning statement
        3. Product value statement
        4. Customer persona
        5. Pricing strategy

Purpose of this post

My objective here is not to scare anyone, run anyone down, and I don’t want to discourage anyone. My goal is to alert you that you should not be surprised when you move to the launch phase. You may have to slow down and let someone put in place the basic building blocks of success.

Doing it right the first time may not be free, but it is the least expensive way to reach success quickly.

Offer

If you want to talk through your state of readiness, I am happy to spend 30 minutes on a call with you. Schedule the call, https://calendly.com/tegllc, and I will send you a copy of INSIGHTS: 33 lessons learned in medical device marketing, absolutely free. Also available on Amazon!

Lessons

  1. Technology is not a product
  2. Build the foundation of market knowledge and document it
  3. Beware of confirmation bias – build independence into the collection process – use a diverse set of customers.
  4. Prepare all five core documents from the perspective of the individual stakeholder.

“Experience is what you get, right after you needed it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia® Group, a small consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success.

One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success. https://calendly.com/tegllc.

© 2020, The Experia® Group, LLC

Uncategorized

Pre or Post Covid-19 creating the right message for new medical devices is critical

Preface

Since the early 1900’s it has been well understood that we, as marketers, sell holes, not drills. Translating that adage into the 2000s and relating it to medical devices, the saying goes something like this; we sell improved clinical outcomes, not the tool that provides it. We sell greater safety, not the equipment that enables it. Yet, I still see advertisements that describe in great detail the physicality of the device. I hear sales representatives take about how their device is made of optically clear plastic.  

 We complain that it takes a decade for physicians to adopt our technology, and yet, we take decades to deploy the latest realizations in medical device marketing.

 Virtual or not, digital or not, regardless of the channel, we must deliver a clear and relevant message. We must promote the outcomes of our products, not what the product is. The clinical benefits and health economic benefits motivate the healthcare institution to purchase, not the device’s features and attributes. They never get to what clear empowers or enables. They let the clinician connect the dots.

Set-up

Recently, I was working with a client on developing the messaging for a new medical device. He went on for 15 minutes on what the product was, how it worked, its cost, how it was better, lighter, and faster than the competition. He was articulate and passionate. It was truly amazing to hear.

 When he finished, I asked a couple of simple questions. Why would I need your device? What will your device allow me to accomplish? This sparked another 15-minute download about the therapy that the device supported. He was equally articulate about the therapy description as he had been about the device description.

 He started to realize that the connection between the two revealed the benefit that the device brought; that is what we were selling.

 The features and attributes exemplify how our drill makes the hole better than our competition’s. 

 I pulled this quote out and had him read it; then, I watched as the wheels turned. 

  Leo McGivena: “Last year one million quarter-inch drills were sold, not because people wanted quarter-inch drills, but because they wanted quarter-inch holes. . .”

 How do you get to the right message?

    •  We started with a one-paragraph description of the clinical problem from the perspective of the clinician. 
      • (Why we needed a hole)
    • We then wrote a two-paragraph product positioning (benefit) statement.
      • (How we provided the hole.)
    • We then wrote a one-page value proposition.
      • (Why our hole was more valuable than the hole our competitors made.)
    • We then crafted a pricing strategy.
      • (What was the realizable value of the hole.)

 Note: These documents are defined in previous posts and in INSIGHTS: 33 lessons learned in medical device marketing available on Amazon.

 Result

 Over the course of 3-weeks, we had created four of the five foundational documents (messages) that are needed to drive all the down-stream marketing activities and collateral material.

Lesson(s)

 1. Crafting a message is critical, no matter how long it takes.

2. Creating great foundational work is crucial to successful communication with the clinician customer.

 3. Who delivers the message, how the message is delivered, where the message is delivered, are all important, but are secondary to what the message is.

“Experience is what you get, right after you needed it most.”

 Make it a great day!

 Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia Group, a consulting firm, which provides experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. Author of INSIGHTS: 33 lessons learned in medical device marketing, available on Amazon.

One-on-one or team coaching is available.

 www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success. [email protected].

© 2020, The Experia Group, LLC

Uncategorized

Why Map the Patient Journey? INSIGHT

Set up

I was developing a Strategic Marketing Plan for a new company. There were so many potential use cases that it was difficult to determine which was the first right one to go after. If you want a complete understanding of whom, how, when, and why your new product might be used, then map the patient journey from the presentation of symptoms through cure. Some journeys are long, and some are short, but the mapping process will reveal much.

 

What can you gain from mapping the journey?

· Stakeholder identification

· Facility variation of care and cost

· Identify diagnostics testing

· Identify protocols

· Identify referral requirements

· Identify cost centers

· Identify service line hand-offs

· Identify reimbursement coding

· Identify the breadth and depth of in-serving requirements

· Determine the value proposition

 

There are many ways to use mapping, a journey with the patient, or frankly any aspect of any process.

 

Note:  If you just can’t access the patient directly there is still value in walking the journey in your mind.  Document it and use it as a hypothesis with others who have experienced the journey personally.

Example one

In1995, I went to work for a company that was plagued by back-orders. No one understood why, exactly. I was assigned to solve the customer service issue, so I had to follow an order from inception to fulfillment. It may sound wasteful, but I went to customer service, and when an order came in, I stapled it to my sleeve. Everywhere that order went, I went. Taking notes, starting and stopping stopwatches, asking questions, cataloging who touched the sales order, and why. What an eye-opening experience. What I learned from that experience allowed the company to redesign every aspect of demand planning and fulfillment. A new goal of 98% same-day shipment, orders received before 3:00 PM, was shipped the same day. Orders after 3:00 PM were shipped the next day. Within a year, that goal was met 94% of the time.

 

The impact of the organization was huge. Inventory carry cost went down, personnel were able to be redirected to other departments, customer satisfaction level increased exponentially, and though I could never quite prove that it was directly related, revenue grew at an unexpected rate. Probably the most significant gain was in salesforce satisfaction with the company.

 

I applied this same mapping process to several other aspects of business, but have found the highest value from following a patient on their journey through an interaction with the healthcare system, not the grand healthcare system just the micro aspects.

 

Example two

A new product opportunity was identified for possible development. We had identified all the aspects of the product opportunity, size, required clinical outcome, costs, and stakeholders in the purchasing process. Everything looked good. We then reached out to several physicians and convinced them to allow us to follow a patient from presentation to the ER through discharge. We stayed out of the way and observed everything, capturing every aspect of that process except the patient’s name. The takeaways were massive. It quickly became apparent that if we were to develop the product, there would be many challenges to our success, that had nothing to do with the physical aspects of the device.

Challenges that we identified:

The patient touched six different service lines (six different budgets), 

1. ED, 

2. Cardiology, 

3. Surgery, 

4. Post-op, 

5. SICU, 

6. General ward.  

7. Woven through all those service lines were RT, Cardiac rehab, and this list went on and on. 

 

Every one of those services was going to need in-servicing as the device would modify their protocols.  

 

We both positively and negatively impacted the cost of care. The value propositions were complex and needed to be based on the total cost to the organization. We would need to make that case higher up in the administration of the hospital.

 

The clinical outcome potential was much greater with the new device than we expected.

 

This realization caused us to rethink every aspect of our marketing, market development, promotional process, the evaluation process – just about every aspect of the device’s impact on the patient and the hospital proved different and more complex than we understood.

 

After our patient mapping exercise, we reworked every aspect of the budget and plan. What we thought would be a quick 18-month development program that would lead to a quick resolution of an un-met need and increased sales, was not this opportunity. 

 

Results

We went forward with product development and ultimately produced a very successful product. There is no doubt that this product would have failed if we had not done the mapping exercise. We went into the opportunity with all of our eyes wide open. Outcome – we spent more time in the concept phase than any other product I have commercialized – nearly a year. We reduced the adoption curve slope, and there was no hockey stick at the end. The marketing budget was three times that of the R&D budget. The good news was that we uncovered cost reductions directly tied to our device, so the price went up dramatically. What we thought would be 18-months to market morphed to 36-months to market.

 

Note: Looking forward, performing these types of exercises is becoming more difficult as hospitals are restricting access to industry personnel. They are also becoming more and more valuable. Restricting access in the actual care setting is just something we all will need to workaround. Partnering with academic institutions and getting them to conduct observational studies seems the only way.

 

Lesson(s)

 

1. It is ok to go slow to go fast.

 

2. Emersion in the patient experience pays enormous dividends.

 

3. A deep understanding before you begin can save significant time and money from re-starts and failures.

 

“Experience is what you get, right after you needed it most.”

 

Make it a great day!

 

Tim Walker

 

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm which, provides experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. 

 

One-on-one or team coaching is available.

 

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success. [email protected].

 

© 2020, The Experia Group, LLC

 

 

Lesson

COVID-19 a new dawn for Medical Device Marketing?

 

 

From time to time, great events shape, speed, or cause change to our World. You know the list as well as anyone, war, famine, pandemics, climate shifts, geological shifting of the tectonic plates each of these significant upheavals has set in motion many dimensions of change. Biology, technology, and society evolve in an adjustment to the new parameters of the new age that results from the energies released during these global events.

Whether COVID-19 is one of these upheavals or not is yet to be seen. But reflecting on how it might impact the world of medical device marketing, it begs the question, are we ready?

The energy that will most likely drive this resulting change to our time will be fear. While fear is a primal motivator for action and is key to survival, it often lends itself to noise and overreaction. It creates the opportunity for those less honorable to take advantage of those not prepared.

Let’s all keep our priorities straight, facts matter, safety first, regulatory processes can be useful, oversight is proper, in a pure capitalist system the safety of each member of society is equal.

Tactics will change, strategies not so much

The strategies won’t change, the tactics will shift away from 80% face-to-face selling toward the digital, or virtual worlds.

One Potential Impact

For a decade, the desire to use the Internet more as a means of influencing behaviors of clinician purchasing, or product selection, has been stunted by the overwhelming majority of clinicians who are resistant to change. Their resistance to change is not only relating to the adoption of new best practice therapy but extends to the way they get information about new products.

Based on the last survey The Experia Group conducted, clinicians identified the top three ways of receiving new product information as 1) colleague recommendations, 2) congress trade show symposium and booths, and 3) from trusted manufacture representatives.

Additionally, the way clinicians prefer to evaluate new products is by having a trained clinically oriented representative of the company present in the hospital or procedure room so that they are present to answer any questions that might come up.

There have been several environmental pressures to move toward digital or remote training on new products. Among these pressures are The Sunshine Act, HIPPA, the restrictions on access to hospitals, the number of administrative processes that are now required to get approval to trial new products, including the expanded use of IRB’s, to name just a few.

Now that face-to-face contact between industry and clinicians has been reduced dramatically, and rightfully so, the COVID-19 pandemic may be the last push needed to total re-orient the selling, evaluation, and training processes for new product awareness and adoption of medical technology.

Are you ready?

What new skills will we all need to develop if this new World comes into existence?

Just off the top of my head:

      • Community building
      • Hosting webinars
      • Digital copywriting
      • Educational content creation
      • Remote customer engagement and interaction
      • Video content editing
      • Technical skills in managing and utilizing apps and facilitate communication
      • Empowering your field organization to use the new skills
      • Label copy review processes may need to modified for speed w/o giving up the proper level of controls.

One challenge that I don’t see an emerging answer for is, how to teach clinicians to optimize their ability to learn remotely.

Perhaps the more significant challenge is how to teach, feel, and touch that so many products require, remotely.

For me, the above list of skills to learn are all tactics and abilities. The strategies for success don’t change. The choice of tactics may be more digitally biased.

Breathe

Not all of the historical sales, education, training, and support techniques will go away. New hybrid approaches will evolve. Regardless of your current skill level, you need to develop a higher level of awareness and execution capability as a person and as an organization. Even if everything settles down after the pandemic passes, what have you lost by learning a new skill set?

Typically, I would offer a solution to the issue.  Sorry, but I don’t have one just yet. For me, I have some learning to do.

Go to www.theexperiagroup.com, where I will be building a resource list (over time) as I develop or refine new skills.

 Lessons:

1) Never stop learning

2) Always keep your environmental scans up and running

3) It is ok to go slow, to go fast, but you need to start

“Experience is what you get, right after you needed it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker, MBA

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia Group. A consulting firm that specializes in providing expertise and experience during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of your success.

One-on-one and team coaching are available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success. [email protected].

© 2020, The Experia® Group, LLC

Available from Amazon.