Why Your Medical Device Company Needs Different Value Props For Different Stakeholders

The story of how Steve Anderson co-founded Preceptis Medical is both a typical homemade startup tale, and a deeply personal one.

In 2010, Steve was President of Acorn Cardiovascular, a medtech company founded in 1997. He’d also spent a lot of time in hospitals while off the clock: His son, Noah, was born with special needs, and has had about 25 surgeries.

Combining his professional and personal experiences, Steve observed that there hadn’t been much evolution in the pediatric medical device space. That was partly because the market is smaller, and partly because the regulatory, clinical, and commercial requirements are higher than devices aimed for adults.

While chatting about this with a neighbor one night over beers, Steve started to think seriously about making a pediatric medical device himself. That same neighbor happened to be Dr. Michael Loushin, a pediatric anesthesiologist, who agreed with Steve’s observation.

Dr. Loushin introduced Steve to mechanical engineer and designer, Keith Leland. Between the three of them, they honed in on creating a device that would allow a doctor to insert a tiny tube into a young patient’s ear in the medical office, rather than putting them under general anesthesia for surgery in the operating room.

A few months after shutting down Acorn Cardiovascular in late 2010, Steve became CEO of Preceptis Medical. The company’s Hummingbird device received FDA clearance in June 2020, and Preceptis is currently running a pilot study.

In this episode of Medsider, Steve explains why your value proposition needs to be front of mind from the start, why having someone who’s been there and done it before can help you navigate the process of getting to market, and writing a study protocol that shows regulators exactly what they need to see.