By Amy Siegel, S2N Health A change in the US leadership, especially one as significant as we will experience this month, naturally generates uncertainty about the future of health care policy and finance. A few things are certain, though (and this is not fake news): The US devotes nearly 18% of its GDP to healthcare, spending […]
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A Consumer’s Perspective on Medical Devices: Why We Need Each Other
By Amy Siegel, S2N Health Recently, S2N mentored some med tech start-ups preparing for competitions, helping them refine their pitches before taking the podium (and doing our part for the innovation ecosystem). Among this crop of companies, several have technologies with “high consumer touch,” meaning that consumers are the primary users of the devices for self-care […]
Three forces driving med tech to be end-to-end solution providers
By Tim Kofol and Rebecca Noble Unless your job involves orthopedic devices, you might have glossed over this year’s exciting news: as of April 1, 2016, the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model (CJR) is mandatory for 791 hospitals in 67 geographic areas of the United States. The headline may not have been very catchy, but really everyone […]
Smart Money in Medtech: What it Means and Why it Matters
By Amy Siegel, S2N Health As the route to a successful exit in med tech has grown longer, and the pathway riskier and more expensive, many VCs have shifted attention to other sectors such as tech, biotech, and health IT. S2N’s emerging med tech clients wrestle daily with this new reality, turning over every rock […]
Variation in Medicine: What Would Darwin Say?
By Tim Kofol, S2N Health Some of S2N’s recent work has gotten me thinking about variation, sometimes extreme, in the practice of seemingly routine medical care. Take the interventional treatment of peripheral arterial disease, for example. We recently spoke to physicians about their approaches to stenting; some stent about 10% of lesions, some stent everything, […]
So you want to to lead an emerging medtech company? These 17 CEOs have some advice for you
By Amy Siegel, S2N Health The CEOs of emerging med tech companies are among the hardest working people I know. There are a multitude of things to worry about, with several on the edge of cataclysm at any given point – keeping money in the bank, getting the damn technology to work, the FDA, building […]
A 2016 proposal for medtech: Build the brand
By Amy Siegel, S2N Health For the past few years, medtech entrepreneurs have seemed practically apologetic for being in medtech. True, there are many reasons, or maybe excuses, to have had ears down and tail between legs. Venture capital has generally favored biotech and health IT over medtech. The large medical device companies have been more focused […]
The drug pricing backlash – Should medtech pay attention?
By Amy Siegel, S2N Health Admittedly, the biotech boom of the past few years has left some of us in medtech feeling a bit inferior, maybe even jealous. Those huge funding rounds, heady IPOs and rich pre-revenue M&A deals can be hard to swallow, especially when investors keep asking you why you can’t be more […]
Commercializing med tech innovations: When scaling sales makes sense
By Amy Seigel & Tim Kofol Mark Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and regarded investor/entrepreneur, coined the term “Product/Market (P/M) Fit”, which simply means “…being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” According to Andreessen, this state of commercial Nirvana is achieved by iterating on your product, messaging, and targeting until […]
Five tall tales medtech startups tell investors
By Amy Siegel, S2N Health Honesty is a virtue to which we all aspire, but in the game of funding a medtech startup sometimes the straight story and a nickel won’t buy you a cup of coffee. Most entrepreneurs, particularly the engineering types who tend to invent medical devices, aren’t deliberate fib-tellers. They are passionate about their innovations, confident […]
