How to build a Fortune 500 med tech company

Recently I’ve found myself answering questions rather than asking them. Usually, I’m sat behind a desk going through my internal flow chart of questions, ruling things out and coming to the most likely decision given the information supplied by the patient in front of me?

‘Does it hurt? What makes it worse? Have you lost weight unexpectedly?’

But this time, med tech companies have been interrogating me.

‘How does this system work? What would happen if we did this? What do you think of this idea?’

I’ve found myself being asked for my professional opinion, not as a medical diagnostician, but for my insight into how the primary care system works. And I take that as a good sign. Too often tech initiatives are rolled out without involving the end user, which ultimately affects the tech’s success. Poorly designed, ignorant applications are doomed to fail and risk the faith of the user.

After a few different conversations with companies as diverse as @MedeskinAI’s dermatology diagnosing AI to remote monitoring services like Isla Health, I see some themes in the questions asked. Here’s my summary as to what makes for successful med tech design and implementation.

Start with reality

Many people think they know the medical arena and what the problems are without ever having worked in it. Those who actually work in the field are best placed to tell you what the sticking points are and why a process is failing. Before sinking millions of pounds and hours into designing something, run it by the users first to see if they think it’s viable. The focus group is your friend.

Draw on the user’s expertise

Med tech regulation is in another league compared to other industries. With its direct impact on human health, it demands the most stringent safety profiles. Therefore, I think it imperative that med tech companies involve specialists in the field to advise on the potential risks of any applied technology. This applies not only to medical devices but also to software. Undoubtedly there are legal standards to be met, but by using medical specialists from inception, the compass will always point in the right direction.

Retrofit a vision

The alternate approach to working with the reality of healthcare (which admittedly is in a pretty difficult position at the moment) is to start with an ideal vision of the future - imagine a perfect service and then try to deliver that. Like Steve Jobs picturing a handheld touch-screen mini-computer, utopian ideals can first be envisaged and then created. This is hard given the constraints of working in a flawed system but like the 1942 vision of the NHS itself - it seems impossible until it’s done.

Back it up with results

The final word of advice to any med tech company trying to make its mark is to prove its worth with formal results. Numbers and stats help so with any implementation project I would take a sample of users, see them through the process and monitor the success. Tell me how many referrals would be saved, how many cancers would be picked up or what the impact of your device/software is. And if you can’t quantifiably show how my life is going to improve with your product, then you should probably go back to the drawing board.