Meeting the Challenge at Home

Originally Published MX November/December 2004

MARKET ANALYSIS

Medtech industry experts expect that the trend toward home healthcare will continue to grow over the next five years, but significant challenges loom for companies that want to develop products for the home-use marketplace.

Those conclusions were among the key results of a recent survey conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council (MassMedic; Boston) and Tiax LLC (Cambridge, MA). Entitled "Healthcare in the Home," the survey was e-mailed to 200 MassMedic members, who include suppliers, product developers, research institutes, and academic health centers as well as manufacturers. The survey's response rate of nearly 20% yielded comments from 37 respondents—a meaningful group, but one not intended to be a robust statistical sample of the entire industry.