Don't Do Ego-Design | Bart Verleije, Voxdale

Well, the obvious answers would be what do you need is time and money.

Uh, I think that everybody knows that, that, uh, the, the cliché is true, hardware is hard and, and hardware for medical devices is even harder.

But what I think is really important is committing to your product.

And what I mean by that is do a very thorough research before you define your product.

First, see what is the right product, and do that on many different aspects.

Uh, it's not only, it's not only on technical aspects, but it's only on-- also on user aspects, regulatory aspects, sustainability, your business, and do a very good product definition and then commit to that.

Because what I've seen too much happen in the past is that what we call feature creep.

Uh, you start developing something and you get input from a third party, whether it's from a physician or a potential client or a supplier, and you try to, and you tend to veer off your development path.

But then you're going into a direction which, which was maybe not your original one, and that costs time and money.

And committing to that first product definition and do that very thorough and following that through over the next five, 10 years even, is what is the most important part in development, in, in medical device development, certainly.

And then, of course, you have different steps into the, into the process going from that idea, from, from that first sketch over to indeed the-- when pressing the button and producing your, your product and selling it.

We have a whole methodology for that, but that probably would take a separate podcast to, to talk that all through.

Uh, but it is basically taking risks away.

And I think, uh, even more in medical device development, but in any development, you want to take the biggest risks away as soon as possible.

Take those risks away and then focus on the rest.

Yeah.

I, I really loved what you said about this, uh, scope creep or feature creep, because that is something that I think makes your device more costly and also can bring in, let's say, unnecessary environmental footprint, unnecessary complication.

So we had several guests on and, and I want to compile, like, their wisdom into one or two sentences here.

It's like, one, where we talked about eco design was like, "I want to make the device elegant and simple, and that is the l- the least costly and the best environmental footprint that we can have." So elegance and simplicity is gonna beat, like, too many bells and whistles.

And the second thing is that you said, and I really love that too, is first understand what product you should be building.

Uh, because that's, that was, uh, the advice of Lisa that we ha-had on in the podcast is, like, the first step that she recommends was go out and talk to physicians and understand the problem that you're solving.

And if there's no problem, and if the, if there's no, let's say, way of monetizing this, and if there's no business behind it, then yeah, you would have no device.

It's not gonna be selling.

You know, it's unnecessary to spend the next five to 10 years of your life developing something that nobody will ever use.

So figure out what the problem is, fall in love with the problem, and then understand how you could be making a business out of this, and then you start developing.