Growth versus Volume in Medtech

One of the more interesting aspects of well-established markets that have significant volume in medical technology product sales is that the revenue and the caseload are sufficient to drive fairly a continuous range of technologies that will meet patient demand. As a result, there tends to be a continuum between high-volume, low-growth and low-volume high-growth. This significance should be apparent to active or potential market participants.

This continuum can be represented in two noteworthy ways, each of which illustrates the inverse relationship between the size of a market segment and its growth. For example, one of the most well established medtech markets is traditional bandages and dressings in wound management. These are simple to manufacturer, applicable to a wide range of wound types, require little clinician knowledge to use and, therefore, widely used throughout the world. They represent very large volume, in the $billions worldwide. At the other end of this spectrum are emerging technologies such as the use of growth factors in wound management. They have a large, as yet untapped potential, so their anticipated growth is high, while their current volume still remains very low, at least by comparison to traditional wound dressings.

Here is how these two technologies appear at the ends of the spectrum in wound management, between which are large numbers of different wound management technologies.

Source: MedMarket Diligence, LLC; Report #S249.

The second way this can be represented is the relative share of the market represented by each as they change over time given their differing sales growth rates. Below is an illustration of the net change in share of the total market for wound management products by each product type. Again, there is a noticeable continuum.