If you are reading this post I’m assuming you already have an idea for a medical product you want the world to know about.
Maybe you even have a prototype, maybe you talked to some users or experts but do you know what your product strategy is?
Let’s first understand what product strategy in general and why you need to have one.
Product strategy is about defining your product vision and goals and based on that to provide a plan on how to achieve them. It is not the actual plan on how to build the product but rather provides the direction you want to go with your product.
A medical product strategy should outline the following elements:
Vision
Whether your company has only one product or multiple medical products, you need to define what the product is trying to achieve and the direction you are going with it. Establishing a high-level product vision will provide you and your team more focus on making decisions that are more strategic basis. Try to think of a long-term vision and think large! Try to keep the vision qualitative and measurable.
Your vision statement should include the following:
*For whom the product is aimed for
*What are their needs or what is the problem the product is solving
*What is unique about the product and how it differentiates from the competitors / current method
Goals
After you know what is your high-level vision and what is the direction you are going; you need to set clear goals for the medical products that can be measured.
Meaning setting up key success metric goals for your products that you can measure if you’re on track with your vision or not. These are still high-level objectives and shouldn’t be confused with the list of features. This will come after you have set your goals. You can also look at the goal as what are the challenges you need to tackle in order to achieve your vision.
Examples for goals:
*Generate revenue within a specific time
*Improve rating and customer satisfaction by a measurable number
*Achieve a specific number of customers within a specific time
Product Roadmap
- While the medical product strategy outlines the elements of the product and the company’s target market, the product road map explains how you will do it, step by step, in high-level. This means you need to layout the plan (your actual activities/ projects) you need to do in order to achieve your goals and the vision. The roadmap should be laid out on a time scale. The time scale used depends on the level of detail required and the length of your project, but I would recommend for high-level roadmap to show quarters or half years and not days and weeks.
- In order to capture the roadmap, I recommend using Excel or PowerPoint but there are also online and real time software that can provide different templates to use to set up a roadmap.
- The roadmap should include some or all of the elements below:
- Goals
- Strategic initiatives
- Releases
- Time
- Status
- Important milestones
Medical product strategy
To summarize, a medical product strategy formulates the market approach, the product positioning, the challenges it has and provides a plan on how to achieve the goals and vision. It is one of the most important things you need to do before you start developing a medical product. Don’t forget, a great product starts with a clear strategy so dedicate the time and efforts for the strategy in order to achieve a successful product and align and focus your team on how to get it done!
For more info and for medical products consulting please contact us
