An informative weekly newsletter that shares insights into building a medical device business in women’s health. It also explores new innovations in the field, how these products were developed, and the inventors behind them.

An update from New York this week

I’m currently in New York meeting with OBGYNs to introduce the Hegenberger Retractor, a device used for post-partum repairs. It’s an exciting innovation in women’s health and the first retractor designed specifically for obstetric use.

Key institutions in New York will start evaluations this week and I’ll share more over the coming weeks. The device has been well received - clinicians immediately understand the clinical benefits it could provide to their practice.

It’s always a pleasure to be back in the city meeting with clinicians I’ve worked with over the years when introducing Fetal Pillow. I made it a priority to understand who the key decision makers were within the hospital and articulate the benefits our product could provide to the department more widely.

This is an important point in introducing a new product to the market. In this week’s newsletter I talk through this and several other considerations when building a medical device business in women’s health.

Over the years I’ve developed some great relationships with clinicians in this field and given their focus on improving women’s health, there is always interest to learn about new innovations in the market. How did I build this network of clinicians and hospital systems?

After several years working in finance, I partnered with my father, an obstetrician who invented a medical device (Fetal Pillow) to solve an important clinical problem in his field (see issue one).

After initially launching into the UK market in 2011, several years later Fetal Pillow was cleared by the FDA (2017). We then focused our efforts on bringing Fetal Pillow to the US market, where I spent most of time educating clinicians on its benefits.

In early 2021, our company (Safe Obstetric Systems) was acquired by CooperSurgical, a leading global player in Women’s Health. I spent one year post completion working for the company during an earnout period to support the national launch strategy.

How to build awareness of your medical device?

Earlier this year, I was invited by the FemTech Lab in London to share the story behind Fetal Pillow and provide practical insights other start-ups in women's health could apply to there business. In this week’s newsletter, I answer one important question: When bringing a new medical device to the market, how do you build awareness?

Articulating your story

We all know the power of sharing your story and the one behind Fetal Pillow immediately resonates with clinicians (see issue one for more detail). It’s a tragic story where a baby did not survive a c-section. It did however lead to a clinician developing a device that would reduce the risk around these challenging deliveries (and potentially save the lives of many babies).

When sharing this story with clinicians over the years, they could empathise with the difficulty of that specific case, but also remember similar cases they had experienced over the years (perhaps with less tragic outcomes, fortunately).

Sharing your story with the end user is crucial in capturing their attention at the start of every conversation. This could be one on one with a decision maker or a more formal presentation to a department. Telling your story should be a priority to keep your audience engaged and ultimately help them understand the value proposition behind your device, and how it might benefit their practice.

What is the story behind your medical device? Did a clinician develop it out of their own need to find a better way? Was there a specific case that led to the idea? Don’t underestimate the impact of sharing the story behind your product.

Start building relationships

There’s no better time than now. Years prior to FDA clearance, we attended major national obstetric conferences and built an initial base of contacts we could approach once our product was available.

We were able to get in front of physicians, key opinion leaders, hospital groups, and potential future partners (including distributors, contractors, larger industry players etc). By meeting clinicians, we created excitement and interest in our innovation early on.

With a database of contacts nationally, following FDA clearance we would have an extensive list of clinicians to approach and discuss next steps in possible adoption. This would of course only be the start of the sales cycle (but it was an important starting point).

These relationships might one day to lead to national distribution opportunities or even acquisition interest (both in our case). We built many of these relationships by attending national conferences, engaging with the industry, and through introductions within our network. We built a relationship over several years with the company that would eventually acquire us. They kept a close eye on our business over the years and monitored our progress.

How can you start building these relationships right now?

Your distribution network is critical

I talked through several of the benefits of direct selling and using an independent distributor model. The key is to bring the right partners on-board and ensure they have a network in place to engage with key decision makers and customers from day one. Make sure you spend a substantial amount of time in the field (with them) to set them up for success.

Building a direct national sales force would require substantial funding, in a market we were just entering. We decided a better commercial decision would be to build an independent distributor network. We were able to develop several important relationships over the years - through direct market presence and attending national conferences. We would meet with national distributors, large corporate players in women’s health (some looking for new products to add to their portfolios), individual sales agents looking for new products to represent, and independent groups.

These relationships opened up the door for introductions to potential partners - typically stocking distributors who would purchase devices from us and sell to the end customer (taking a share of the profit for their efforts). These groups would typically cover several states, with their own reps (often 1099s or sales agents) and teams working locally to represent a product.

This would be effective in that local reps would be selling and promoting our device to key hospital systems in their territory, a limitation of what we could do from the UK ourselves. Once our product was approved at a hospital, they could continue to provide training and local support.

Because these distributors would purchase stock from us and then sell to the end customer (hospital), this was beneficial for us from a working capital perspective - we would not need to spend substantial resources in trying to promote our product in such a large market.

Targeted marketing approach

Once we entered the US, we were laser focused on building adoption here and marketing was critical to our success. Given the nature of our business - selling a medical device to clinicians nationally, we would be limited in how far we could take it without face to face contact. Clinicians would want to see the device in their hand, understand how it would be used in their practice, and the clinical data behind it. Sometimes all you need is 5 minutes with a clinician to share your story, build awareness, and create excitement. That was always our priority from a marketing perspective.

For our device, we could identify key customers by the number of babies delivered per year at the hospital. This was an important metric to support our targeted approach. When looking at a particular state, who were the top 10 birthing hospitals or systems? Within these accounts, who are the decision makers? How do we get in front of that clinician? What conferences should we attend? These are just a few of the questions that need to be answered when building awareness and adoption of your product.

Outsource support from experts in non core areas

We needed to prioritize what mattered most - bringing our product to as many mothers, babies, and clinicians as possible. Without the infrastructure of a large corporation, we knew our efforts could be spread too thin trying to do everything ourselves.

By outsourcing support in certain areas, we maintained a lean cost base and could direct attention to key business development activities that would increase adoption and drive international expansion. For me personally, I could focus my time on building our presence in the US market. These cost and resource efficiencies underpinned our margins and allowed us to reinvest in the business.

Outsourced support in several areas (finance, payroll, warehousing, logistics, regulatory and manufacturing) meant we could focus our efforts where it mattered most - building awareness, increasing adoption, driving sales, and generating value behind our business.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this week’s newsletter and look forward to sharing more insights into the innovative technologies being developed, the companies and individuals at the forefront of these advances, and how we were able to make a lasting impact on the field of obstetrics.

Any questions or comments, feel free to mail me at: [email protected]

If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter and know of anyone that might be interested in reading it, please feel free to share.

Have a great weekend!

Nish Varma

Cofounder - OBSolve Ltd

Consulting Services - OBG Access Ltd

Previously - Safe Obstetric Systems (Fetal Pillow)