Many medtech companies are built on world-class engineering but still fail because they’re engineering solutions to the wrong problems. Oscar Daws, co-founder and managing director of Tone Product Design, outlines a more effective approach to innovation – one that will help more ideas reach the finish line.
It’s easy for development teams to get tunnel vision, investing years in perfecting a technology without ever validating whether anyone truly needs it and can afford it. The result? Beautifully engineered solutions to low-value problems, often missed by users, misunderstood by clinicians or avoided altogether due to cost, complexity or inconvenience.
Which is why the order of problem-solving matters. First identify the right problem. Then solve it brilliantly.
Problem-first medtech innovation
The most cost effective and lowest risk approach to innovation rarely starts with a clever idea or a new technology, it starts with a clearly defined, resonant problem. One that’s acutely felt by users, is poorly addressed by existing solutions and would save (or make) a significant amount of money if solved. These are the problems that make successful medtech businesses. Not only do they drive product success, but they also generate protectable intellectual property (IP), create clearer value propositions and allow teams to build faster, with fewer costly detours.
We’ve seen this first hand in medtech, where technical excellence is often mistaken for product-market fit. A device might perform flawlessly during testing, only to be left unused in the real world due to practical or emotional barriers. These are people problems, not technical ones.
What makes a problem worth solving?
Not all issues are created equal. So, to know if one is truly worth investing in, we ask:
- Is it big, unmet and emotionally resonant?
A big problem affects a large number of people, or a smaller number in a very big way. They are unmet when no solution exists, or the products available are only slightly better than the status-quo. Emotionally resonant problems go beyond the head to the heart. They touch on deeper human feelings like safety, security, comfort, confidence.
- Can we observe it, not just hear it?
Interviews are helpful but often people don’t know what they need – and tell you what you want to hear. The best insights often come from watching users in context. Ethnographic research can help surface the hidden friction people have just learnt to live with.
- Does it make commercial sense to solve?
A great problem might affect millions or deliver transformative value to a niche. Both can justify a product, but the business case is different. In any case, it’s unfortunately very common for medtech companies to drastically underestimate the cost and time involved in taking a technology to manufacture. In these cases, knowing the true extent of the investment needed from the start would have made it clear that their problem was the wrong one to choose. To avoid this, at Tone we push ourselves and our clients to focus on building a Minimum Testable Product (MTP) first and then ask ourselves, ‘What’s the quickest and cheapest way to prove commercial viability and market demand?’
- Are current solutions poorly executed?
Too much competition can make it difficult to stand out. No competition at all should prompt you to ask why – there’s almost always a reason. But weak competition may signal an opportunity worth exploring, especially if users are relying on hacks and workarounds to meet their needs.
- Can we quantify the cost of not solving it?
Whether in lost time, clinical risk or emotional toll, the value of a solution should align with the pain of the problem. At some point, you’ll need to ask people to exchange money for your product. To do that, you’ll need to justify that your solution is a better spend of that money than the thousands of other things they could do with their budget.
From insight to IP
A meaningful problem does more than guide development, it lays the foundation for differentiation and defensibility. Solving a specific, neglected problem well can generate IP, support research and development tax relief and create intangible assets that are difficult to copy.
Our work on the FXI mask is a clear example. By focusing on a tightly defined clinical challenge, we were able to create a targeted solution with clear value to users and a unique technical architecture – leading to both commercial traction and protectable IP.
The role of design in a shifting landscape
As AI reshapes creative industries, including product design, it’s becoming easier for anyone to generate ideas or visual assets. Tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT are prompting clients to come to the table with the illusion of fully formed concepts, asking designers to simply execute them.
This shift reinforces the need to clarify what design actually means, especially in medtech. It’s not just about aesthetics. It’s about insight, creativity and problem-solving. Design should be embedded alongside clinical and engineering thinking from day one. Not to decorate the solution, but to help define it.
We prefer to talk about innovation and invention. These words better capture the role of designers as connectors and creators, linking human need, technical feasibility and commercial viability.
Medtech’s missed opportunity
In medtech, we’ve seen huge investment in technical excellence without equivalent focus on user behaviour. Devices are often engineered from the inside out, prioritising components, protocols and clinical requirements, while undervaluing real-world usage.
The cost of this misalignment is high: poor adoption, low adherence, wasted development time and missed commercial opportunities.
Designers bring empathy and creativity to this challenge. We question assumptions. We observe the unspoken and reframe technical goals in human terms.
Medtech’s next frontier might be enabled by cutting-edge tech like smarter sensors or better batteries, but it’ll be defined by how well we understand the lives, routines and needs of the people we aim to serve. So stop solving technical problems. Start solving people’s problems. The rest will follow.