BME 4959: Marketing Report
Meredith Huszagh, Fahad Iqbal, Sara Keller, Patricia Twilley, Lauren Severance, Alison Williams
In order to best market our product, a Fibrotic Liver Ultrasonic Imaging Diagnostic System (FLUIDS), we must be able to understand the target market for our business, know how to differentiate ourselves from competitors, know how to reach customers, and have a plan for generating profit. While our product is intended to improve healthcare and be effective in both high and low resource environments, it is important to remember that it is still a marketable product that will cost money to manufacture, and therefore, it is imperative that it be both profitable and sustainable.
The target market for our business is hospitals and doctors’ offices. In hospitals, the device will be used for case by case diagnosis of liver fibrosis, while in doctors’ offices, the system will be used for regular health measurement, potentially even to detect cases in which patients may be at high risk for developing liver fibrosis. In this way, our product will be marketed as both a diagnostic tool and a monitoring tool for preventative medicine. The market for this device will include health care facilities with generous resources as well as facilities in low resource environments, as it will be a low cost system. The device may be specifically targeted toward health care providers for chronic alcoholics and patients with chronic hepatitis, as these patients are more likely to develop liver fibrosis. If costs and operator technical training requirements are reduced enough, the product will be marketed for in home, self administered measurements, similar to how blood pressure monitors and glucose monitors are marketed currently.
To differentiate our products from competitors, we will market its low cost and portability. Not only will it have an initial lower cost, but because individual device components will be the least expensive possible (while still retaining quality), the accompanying maintenance costs will also be minimal. Marketing emphasis will be placed on the portability of the product. Most ultrasound-based diagnostic tools currently are massive enough to fit on a cart. The leading competitor, Fibroscan, has been able to fit their system in a computer sized device. Our device is planned to be handheld and even more compact without requiring an accompanying cart.
Advertising is another important component of our marketing model. To this end, we aim to contact major Hepatology groups and centers to verify that our device is a viable tool for assessing liver fibrosis. Additionally, in order to expand our market to developing countries, it would behoove us to contact major non-profit organizations that do work regarding third-world healthcare, such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, which would be instrumental in developing global contacts. Finally, expanding sales within the United States is also important, in which case it would be beneficial to have a reliable number of industry, hospital, and academic connections.
Our end goal with regard to profiting on this product is to work towards turning it into a ubiquitous medical tool. We aim to make it simple, portable, and inexpensive enough that it can be a regular diagnostic used in the clinic, just as heart rate monitors and blood pressure cuffs are used currently. Additionally, this device would be universally useful in hospitals and clinics, opening up doors for mass production. Finally, while our device is limited currently to liver stiffness, there might be other currently undiscovered ways that this technology may be used, such as examining vessel hardening or other similar pathologies. This would allow for more research opportunities into forging a larger patient population.