Time to market ‘most important driver’ in medtech, study finds

Global consulting firm PA Consulting has concluded a study that finds reducing time to market is the number one driver among medical device companies

Reducing time-to-market is seen as one of the most important drivers for staying competitive – only beaten to the top spot by product innovation – and is followed by efficient product development.

66% of respondents state that product innovation, and 56% that time-to-market reduction, are top competitive drivers.

This result reveals companies share the view that they need to focus more on shortening the development time – but action still needs to be taken.

Organisations are targetting an average reduction of 25% in the next five years for development time and costs to remain competitive.

Nearly 55% of respondents set the target to reduce time at 20-30% in the next five years.

The general cascading of development costs for the different classes ranges between less than $2 million to more than $20 million.

And with the stated average cost reduction of 25%, savings between $1 million and $5 million can be achieved.

However, companies are not doing enough to achieve this target, despite recognising its importance.

The majority of respondents saw reusing technology (69% as lever for time, 65% as lever for cost), focusing on core competencies (50% as lever for both time and cost) and managing strategic partners and suppliers (50% as lever for time, 42% as lever for cost) as the most effective levers to reduce time- and cost-to-market.

Analysing the results of the top performers in the survey, PA Consulting says it "discovered a huge gap" between respondents’ own capabilities, the estimated level of their competitors’ capabilities and the actual best practices of respondents.

On average, respondents rate their competitors’ capabilities not much higher than their own (on average 10%), but lag behind the best practices by around 40%.