The Impact of ABHI's US Accelerator: A Case Study from Mediplus

I remember chatting with Peter Ellingworth at Heathrow’s T5 around five years ago. We were discussing the UK’s focus on “BRIC” & “MINT”, which on the face of it, look like good markets to get into. As UK medical device companies we are all very much aware of the barriers to entering foreign markets, and trying to get your head around six different regulatory systems is just not going to happen given the limited resources and budgets we have. We need to focus.

The USA is a very attractive proposition for UK MedTech SMEs. For one, it is the largest market for healthcare. Yes, they have a tough regulatory system to get through, but once you have, you have access to a market very receptive of new technologies and innovations like ours.

To cut a very long story short, Peter agreed to put some resources behind the idea of helping ABHI’s members to be successful in the USA.

This was the first step in a journey that we have been involved with in some way, shape or form, since then. The ABHI have done a number of things to help us. For me, the key has been the missions and more recently establishing the Accelerator hub. 

These missions are essentially a whistle stop tour of hospital systems, GPO’s, payers and incubator hubs, to name just some of the places we have visited. It has been an eye-opening experience to say the least. Imagine being sat in a room with the C-Suite of one of the largest hospital systems in, say, Texas, and being given the opportunity to talk about your products and getting really useful feedback from the people who run the hospital. It is not something you get to do every day. Yet on these missions, it is something you get to do multiple times a day, for an entire week.

The other great things about the missions is you get to spend extended periods of time with other UK companies who are at various periods in their journey to crack the USA. Swapping “war stories” on successes and, equally, failures, is a very welcome benefit. 

More recently the ABHI set up the Accelerator programme with The Dell Medical School. I think this has made a real difference to the way we understand and approach the market.  We get dedicated support from ABHI and The Dell Medical School where the Accelerator is physically located. It’s hard to capture everything they can do for you in a short blog post.  Suffice to say, if you ask for whatever help you can think of, someone within the ABHI/Dell network can help get you to an answer.

When all is said and done, we need to be able to show a return on the investment. In simple terms, we now have customers buying our products as a direct result of the missions. We have also made some extremely useful contacts that I am sure will stand us in good stead for the future. There is no way we would have been able to achieve this on our own.

I’m glad ABHI took on the challenge to help UK MedTech companies take on the challenge of cracking the USA, and I’m looking forward to hearing more success stories from the cohort of members.

James Urie, Sales & Marketing Director, Mediplus