By Rebekkah Carney, Associate Vice
President, GfK Market Measures
Medical and surgical device development is gaining status as the place to be in health care manufacturing. It’s fast-paced, offers some relief from the current frustrations in the pharmaceutical environment and there’s ample opportunity to be the next great innovator. However, the very circumstances that make this arena a great place to launch a product – speed to development, speed to market and engineering enhancements for optimizing outcomes – make bringing the right product to market an enormous challenge.
Prioritization is the problem. When assessing which potential project will optimize ROI in the context of the market and your current franchise, you may be faced with dozens of possibilities, all technically feasible, all supported by physician experts, enthusiastic R&D teams and company champions. All the options may resonate with hope and promise for your bottom line. Selecting the right initiative is critical to companies and careers, so a rigorous, data-driven method for selection is essential.
As demonstrated in the figure below, Concept X looks like a good option. Measuring only one concept can be limiting, however, since it does not allow for comparison and can foster positive bias for a new concept.
Adding additional concepts to the mix changes the picture as shown below. By measuring several concepts, valid comparisons can be made (concept vs. concept), but it is still not the optimum way to measure.
As shown in the next figure, Concept Y is the clear winner when compared to industry norms. Measuring against industry norms gives the truest reading of how a concept will resonate in the context of the marketplace.
You could run a conjoint for each to determine the best outcomes, attributes and prices option, develop a forecast model and continually adjust for each new potential project. For certain stages of product development, a full-blown conjoint is essential, especially for pricing and precision forecasts. However, given the number of options, procedures and customer stakeholders, it’s a good thing that analytical alternatives exist. Without them, a medical device company could go bankrupt just developing its pipeline, and the competition could bring a product to market in the time it could take you to assess your options.
Product concept testing is one of the most actionable pieces of research you can conduct. It offers clear, straightforward direction, and it can be conducted in a matter of weeks or, in extreme cases, days. It’s flexible and allows you to compare abstract approaches (laproscopic entry or endolumenal entry? peripheral vascular stents or amputation for peripheral arterial disease?) or specific enhancements of an existing tool (safety retraction or one-handed sliding cap post injection? trigger or push-button activator?). It offers the satisfaction of a clear winner among your choices. With normative benchmarks, you can determine critical thresholds for success for stimuli.
Several different methodologies can be employed to ensure a balanced approach among potential profiles. A profile can include text, graphics and video. You can use it to test preferences very early, prioritize several fixed options or validate assumptions as a prelaunch or competitive launch sanity check. With enhancements, you can use it to estimate switch, generate uptake curves and determine your rate of cannibalization. Even with such a straightforward technique, though, there are a couple of keys to making sure your concept test is designed for success.
Customers. Select the right respondent set. Make sure respondents are really the people making the decisions about use of the product and dealing with real risks. For concept testing, you want active physicians performing a threshold of procedures, not just Key Opinion Leaders. In some cases, you will want to go to materials managers, hospital purchasing, nurses, educators or even patients to determine a product’s chances of success. Multistakeholder approaches to this research are common for devices where no one person or role determines use or access to the product.
Comparisons. Ratings for one concept are difficult to interpret. Is 5 on a 7-point scale good, average or terrible? Respondents tend to bias positively on new concepts, but their overenthusiasm can depend on specialty and whether the product is a new concept or a line extension with which they have experience. It’s important to make sure you are consistent in the ways you evaluate new concepts so you can make valid comparisons and have a context that clarifies if your concept represents the next best thing since sliced bread, or an Edsel.
Consistency. Even if your marketing research partners don’t have a database of concept test benchmarks for comparison, you can make sure that within your own organization, product concepts are tested consistently so your company has internal benchmarks for success and you and your colleagues can get the most information for your efforts.
Communication. To ensure concepts are communicated clearly, you need to design the profiles very carefully. Clear descriptions of attributes, differential benefit and relevant clinical outcomes are critical. You can often use video or graphics to enhance communication of specific concepts. As you define your concepts, be careful of intellectual property issues if your product is in a very early stage of development and there is a risk that the innovation it represents could be mimicked by a competitor.
Commitment. Get support from your internal teams to follow the guidance of the results. Sometimes a concept test will deliver the directive that you need to apply your resources toward developing another project altogether in order to compete effectively. While disappointing for the idea’s champions, this is very good news, and it means that you have collectively safeguarded resources and time so that everyone can work on a project that will succeed. This is a more preferable option in the long run for everyone, including the company, the doctors and the patients you support.
Medical and surgical device marketing requires the same kind of precision and adaptation that goes into developing the devices themselves. Armed with good information, expertise and the right instruments, you can improve outcomes for both your patients and your profit predictably. Product concept testing is a powerful tool for prioritizing your pipeline.
The Power of Possibility – Concept Testing for Medical 
