3 min reading time

At the 10x Medical Device Conference, Francisco Miguel Trigueiros, Managing Director of Global Product Marketing, gave us this analogy.

Sliced bread was invented by Otto Rohwedder in 1912 but he sold zero units in 15 years. It was Wonder Bread that made it popular by investigating and segmenting the market, understanding the pain points, and then developing the channels, pricing, strategies, and marketing.
• To bakeries, fresh deliveries on time so you can save on costs.
• To supermarkets, now you can compete with bakeries.
• To consumers, Wonder Bread builds strong bodies in 8 different ways. (This was pre-FDA.)

His point? Oftentimes, disruptive innovation is confused with pioneering. You can have science and clinical evidence but if you don’t know how to go to market and truly address the needs of that market, you will fail.

He shared Siemens’ approach to his categories: molecular imaging, CT, and ultrasound. Due to space constraints, I’ll talk here about their ultrasound work, which I think was fantastic.

• User Designed. Siemens changed button placement, touch panel controls, and ergonomics based 395 ultrasound users’ feedback over 170 workshop sessions.

• Easy of Use. Then they bought competitors’ systems and compared ease of use. For example, if they owned a GE, they were sent a Siemens and a competitors. If they owned a Siemens, they sent two competitors. They measured sonographers’ ability to complete tasks and time needed.

I recognize few Medical Devices Group readers have a Siemens-sized budget, but if you are in medical device marketing or compete in Siemens categories, you won’t want to miss the replay and slides.

Find them at https://medgroup.biz/Siemens

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The Medical Devices Group surpassed the 350,000-member mark this week. Thank you to all contributors who continue to make our community thrive.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

P.S. Registration for the 10x Medical Device Conference is now open at https://medgroup.biz/10x

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Julie Omohundro
Principal Consultant at Class Three, LLC
Bill, this is not something I would assess in terms of the depth of the company’s pockets but in terms of ROI and the competitive environment for the product. If the investment in user input will provide an adequate return, the company can find a way to afford it. If competitors can afford it, the company can’t afford not to. This doesn’t mean all such efforts have to be at this level.

Lorraine Chapman
Senior Director of Healthcare
Ease of use is critical! If anyone is interested in more information about the study they can read about it here: http://www.macadamian.com/work-customer-experience/case-studies-software-application-developer/usability-testing-for-siemens-medical/

Austin Walters
Bringing Innovation to Life in Healthcare
Thanks, Joe, the analogy of sliced bread’s eventual success reminds me of how Edison gets the credit for inventing the light bulb when really he invented a light bulb AND, more importantly, the electrical grid and a signed agreement with Wall Street to pilot it.

Urvi Kanakaraj
Medical Device Enthusiast | Verification and Validation Engineer | Eternal Learner
This is a wonderful, highly informative talk. Thank you so much for sharing this!

Michael Burgio
Founder & CEO, Burgio Enterprises, Ltd.
Thank you for your interest in our research methodology.
Double-blind. By definition, it has two areas of bias, conscious and or unconscious. Additionally, neither the patient knows what he/she is receiving, nor does the physician or rancor doing the ranking know. In this way, patient and rancor are blinded and therefore misconceptions or prejudice are supposedly eliminated. It archives (with a properly performed study) a rather defined indication that the investigation works: by chance. But it does not indicate that the patient may benefit markedly from the drug. The results may only be marginal not clinically significant effects.
Quadruple blind. By definition, the subjects, investigators, evaluators, and the data analysis all remain blinded. This can be difficult to perform complex. It has no bias, there is no possibility of affecting the accuracy of the clinical finding.
Recognizing the outcome of a double-blind study could be compromised due to the probability of a conscious or

Jessica Wilms
Freelance Trainer and Interim Manager
If you have a small budget, there are still things to take home from this presentation. My personal favorite: the “pre-mortem approach” to create optimal market acceptance.

William (Bill) Jackson
Senior Consultant/President WF Jackson Associates, LLC
Wow would be great to do this if a company had the resources, unfortunately, most companies do not have deep pockets.

Paul Giurata
CEO – Catalyst UX | UX Strategy, Design & Development
Great example how user experience and simplicity can have great impact. Thanks for sharing!

Chander Bhushan Sharma
Certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
The user’s influence can only be won, when it impact his work positively.