TLDR for this long post: No market is too small to invest in when patients need help. Read on to learn about how sickle cell disease is only a starting point.
When you’re considering an innovation to bring to market – or a #healthcare startup to fund – it’s critical to get a deeper understanding of the population of patients who stand to benefit. If you can’t do it yourself, it’s crucial to enlist someone who can.
This issue was on display at Monday evening’s panel at @BioscienceLA “Medtech Milestones: From Ideation from Market Implementation.” The discussion captured several key points you need to know about. The first was showing the value of “peeling back an onion.”
The discussion started by exploring whether a market may be too small to garner investor interest, such as in a sickle cell disease innovation. This disease * must * ultimately be solved. There’s no question about that. But relative to the monetary investment, panelists pointed out that “only” 100,000 patients are impacted in the US, making it difficult to demonstrate a quick ROI. As the panelists and audience soon discovered, such a surface-level analysis might have wrongly signaled the end of a potential investment in a badly needed new treatment.
As it turned out, Kwame Ulmer shared an anecdote from a recent investment Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health made in a sickle cell disease technology. It did so partly because the start-up made a case for the solution to expand into a cardiac indication, expanding the number of treatable patients.
Jessica Richter echoed the sentiment in a story about a recent client’s pursuit, and regulatory submission, for sickle cell innovation in Nigeria. Rounding it out, Maysam Pessian jumped in to explain how his separate client with a sickle cell disease innovation pertinent to Eritrea, Africa, was applying for IP protection there.
The audience was riveted as each panelist jumped in to share their related stories, partly because those stories reminded them to think longer-term, and more strategically, than just searching for a large, quick payout. What a benefit all around.
No innovation is too small if the population of patients who stand to benefit is properly assessed. Consider how this impacts your market approach – and where there may be stones left unturned.
Curious how to peel back the onion for your medical device? DM to chat!
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