Published by The Next Phase Consultancy, Inc. – November 2003 – Revised April 2006

“Responsible Discovery” – It’s good for all of us!

• Has your marketing or business development team ever come back with a great idea for a new medical device or system from an expert on your scientific advisory board but lacks the information you need to objectively evaluate it?
• Has one of your sales representatives identified an invention that does not quite fit your company’s objectives for future growth proposed by a prominent physician in your company’s top purchasing hospitals or institutions?
• Is your R&D team overwhelmed with 30 or 40 “highly important” product development projects but only has only a fraction of the resources and staff to manage them?
• Or do you need end user feedback on performance and features of the one medical device your company has targeted for its flagship product?

If any of these situations sounds similar to your company’s current situation it may have medical device discovery “run wild.” Your discovery process needs to be tamed…and now!

Certainly most of us enjoy the thrill of finding the new opportunity, idea or concept serendipitously coming from almost any source. In fact, optimally about 10% of your company’s new product ideas should be explored in a free environment by R&D, engineering, marketing and others to encourage “creative intellectual play” among its team members – another excellent way to discover even more creative ideas. However, the majority of the time, the flow of “the new” needs to be managed within company-specific guidelines to encourage productive use of the development team’s resources and time. This method of 10% play/90% guided activity is “responsible discovery.“

Proven Example of Successful “Responsible Discovery”

The “a Ha!” produced through responsible discovery is addicting. For decades, this process has energized and enlightened the pharmaceutical industry – “drug discovery” identifies chemical compounds with potential therapeutic value. Large pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Novartis, Pfizer, Shering-Plough and hundreds of others have proven the methodology. And biotech companies are equally adept at this process. A collective hundred billion dollar industry can’t be wrong.

Discovery also serves as a foundation. Again in the drug industry, drug discovery is THE critical process that precedes and becomes the foundation for “drug development.” Discovery effectively screens the candidates, eliminating those that are less likely to succeed for technical, market, economic  or environmental reasons. Discovery leads one candidate to become a commercially successful, highly specific drug that cures or treats the symptoms of the targeted disease or medical condition. Each commercial blockbuster billion dollar drug is proof positive that responsible discovery has done its job.

Responsible Device Discovery

Discovery is just as critical for the medical device industry, but it is rarely recognized as such. Why is this the case? Could it be that a much smaller investment is often at stake for device development than for the drug discovery/development process? Is device discovery, therefore, considered to be unnecessary, with more emphasis on the “D” than the “R” in R&D? Or does it actually occur but we are simply unaware of it happening? And do we simply accept the “lowest fruit” - the obvious technology platform or device embodiment that we have developed that can easily be adapted to treat another medical condition or disease - or do we actively listen to our end users to discover the optimal technology solution for that patient group?

Whatever the reason, we need to start the discovery process by listening to the “voice of the customer,” observing clinical practitioners in action and preparing diligent customer needs analyses to create the optimal devices by…

…discovering those market opportunities with the greatest need

…identifying those opportunities with the greatest market potential 

…screening for those device embodiments with the “best fit” to our team’s abilities

These tools give us the information we need to rigorously evaluate and quantify our market opportunities leading to our medical device development process, creating a variety of device embodiments that will eventually lead to our chosen product concept and thereafter our device’s Market Requirements Definition. But first things first…

What This Means for You and Your Company

The bottom line is responsible device discovery can save you from 100 to 1,000 times of what it costs to perform. In fact, you may save hundreds of thousands to even tens of millions of dollars or euros throughout your device or system development process had discovery not been performed properly before your device development began. These savings depend on performing discovery early and with a solid plan for its investigation and implementation up-front. Relying on an expert in the field to develop that plan, objectively perform the investigation and help you implement its results will help you avoid lost time, reduce costs, and accelerate your device’s time to market so you can be more competitive and realize revenues earlier in your medical device’s life cycle, gaining earlier financial returns. 

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