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.

In this week’s newsletter, I share the story behind Northside Atlanta, and how we were able to bring our product (Fetal Pillow) to the largest birthing hospital in the country.

Northside Atlanta is now one of the largest users of this device in the US, but it wasn’t easy getting there. A lot of research, relationship building, travel, enthusiasm, hard-work, and patience were required.

It was worth the effort and I hope you take something away that both educates and inspires you.

Northside Atlanta - largest birthing hospital in the US

Nearly 25,000 babies were born at Northside hospitals in 2020. With 16,000 births at the Atlanta site alone, this one hospital delivers more babies than any other in the United States.

When analysing the US market prior to our launch, we identified key hospitals and systems (by number of babies delivered) where our efforts should be prioritised.

With more babies being delivered at a particular hospital, this would lead to greater utilisation of our device (used in second stage cesarean sections). This would directly help more mothers and their babies, and would be beneficial from a commercial perspective in growing our business.

With the largest birthing hospital in the country using our device, this could provide a great reference site, not only in the Southeast, but nationally.

Below I share details of the sales cycle at this specific account and the steps taken to drive adoption of Fetal Pillow.

Identify key decision makers

We were early in our US launch and did not have any clinical contacts in the Atlanta area. Who would I need to get in front of at Northside to share our story and introduce our product? If I could meet with a decision maker early on, this might open the door to present more formally to the wider obstetrics department.

The OBGYN department hierarchy is usually available on the hospital’s website. Scan this to identify decisions maker at a particular hospital. In our case, this would typically be one of the following: OB Chair, OB Chief, OB Director, or the Director of Women’s Services.

Put a plan in place to make contact with the identified decision makers - could you reconcile the points above with your database from conferences previously attended? Usually there would be a way to find an introduction to a decision maker, you would just need to be resourceful.

In the case of Northside, I considered regional conferences where key clinicians might be in attendance. The South Atlantic Association of OBGYNs conference would include obstetricians in the states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

In the leadership section of the website, state representatives from Georgia would be in attendance - this could be a plausible route to connect (perhaps indirectly) with a clinician from Northside. I decided to attend this meeting in February of 2019 and made my travel arrangements.

Attend a local conference to build your network and awareness

I attended the SAAOG meeting in 2019, with a small booth to demonstrate our product to attendees. I hoped to meet a key decision maker from Northside (which alone would have made the trip worthwhile).

Looking back, I took a chance by travelling from the UK to a relatively small meeting in the US. I was fortunate to meet a key decision maker from Northside in person – they visited our booth (purely due to curiosity and to find out more about Fetal Pillow).

We had a great conversation - she wondered why someone from the UK had travelled all the way to Sea Island in Georgia! I shared my father’s story (why he developed Fetal Pillow) and that I was now trying to launch our device into the US. She was fascinated by the clinical case and inspired by the story of an obstetrician trying to solve a problem in her field. She could also empathise with the challenges around these deliveries and immediately saw the benefit it might provide to her facility.

That one 5-minute conversation to introduce her to our product made the whole trip worth my time. We exchanged details and she asked that I come present to her wider group at Northside.

Present your product to the wider department and gain clinical buy-in

I was invited to present at their upcoming obstetric safety meeting a few weeks after the regional conference. The clinician I had met already shared the story with several of her colleagues who were also intrigued and excited to learn more about this novel device. Of course, they had plenty of questions too.

Often, you’re given a 10-15 minute slot to present at these department meetings. The clinical presentation is critical - how do you articulate the story and benefits behind your product in such a way that you capture the audience’s attention. This is one for its own newsletter, but after many years selling into the UK market, we had a succinct and impactful presentation geared towards to such department meetings.

Clinicians hearing about this product for this first time, understandably had questions - some would focus on the clinical data and others would be interested in the practical steps around using the device in a clinical setting.

I was able to answer several questions at this meeting, talk through the clinical data in detail, and most importantly gather buy-in from the department.

Value Analysis & Purchasing

A few weeks later, I received confirmation that the department would like to proceed. Commonly, the next stage following clinical buy-in is a review by the Value Analysis Committee (VAC), particularly when working with larger hospital groups made up of several individual hospitals.

I will delve a little deeper into this process in a separate newsletter, but typically the purchasing or sourcing team behind the VAC will review the cost-benefit analysis (if available), the clinical literature on the product, and the anticipated utilisation and therefore expected cost of use to the system.

In my experience, medical device companies are not usually invited to these meetings, and having a clinical champion on-board to voice their demand for the product is hugely beneficial. If you can develop a relationship with the champion and prepare them for the meeting, this puts you in an advantageous position.

In the case of Northside, the clinician from our very first interaction fortunately acted as champion. We provided all supporting paperwork directly to the VAC who would then review this along with the champion’s comments at their next meeting.

The Perinatal & OB Executive Committee approved Fetal Pillow in April 2019, around a month after the OB department meeting where the product was initially presented.

We would then need to be set up as a vendor with Northside - as a new entity operating in the US, we would eventually need to be set up with all hospitals nationally.

Training & Education

With your product approved for use or an evaluation, this is a great step forward, but the second part of the puzzle is to support a successful evaluation and therefore on-going use. We would need to ensure the product would be used correctly by clinicians, so they would immediately realise the benefits to their patients and practice.

I spent the next year making several trips to Atlanta to train the many doctors and nursing staff. Eventually, we would appoint a great distribution partner with local presence in Georgia who could manage the account going forward and provide regular education and training for the department. They would eventually expand use to other hospitals within the Northside group.

Persistence & Patience!

Northside Atlanta is now one of the largest users of Fetal Pillow in the US market. It took time and persistence to get to this stage, but it was worth the effort.

It was a valuable experience working through the sales cycle at one of the largest birthing hospitals in the country, and one which would be applied to several other large accounts throughout the country.

The below visual provides an overview of the steps discussed above with relevant timelines included.

If you would like to discuss any specific points on this account, feel free to drop me an email! I will give case studies on several other important accounts over the coming weeks.

A brief note on the author - Nish Varma

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 (detailed in issue one).

After initially launching into the UK market in 2011, several years later, Fetal Pillow was cleared by the FDA in 2017. We then focused our efforts on bringing Fetal Pillow to the US market.

I spent the next few years building our US business and 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.

It was a 10 year journey to commercialise and bring the product to market - we were able to prove our business model in the US and that garnered interest from some of the key industry players.

Since the company sale, my father and I have started developing a new obstetric product and hope to bring this to market in the near future. I also consult for early stage medical device companies looking to expand their operations internationally.

This newsletter is a passion project to share some of our journey with others who might be on a similar path.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this week’s newsletter. Any questions, comments or feedback, please feel free to email me.

If you would like support with your business development activities, let’s set up a call to discuss how I can help.

Have a great weekend!

Nish Varma

[email protected]

Consulting Services - OBG Access

Co-Founder - OBSolve