The Global Tumour Market

• The global market for medical devices is currently a US$185 billion opportunity
• Of that market the energy segment is estimated at $25 billion in 2017 and is dominated by high technology products ranging from devices that can heat and cool tissue over a significant temperature range to those that can vibrate at 55 thousand cycles per second to denature tissue.
• The market is growing at over 5% per annum
• Cryosurgery is one of a number of technologies available and represented approximately 5% of the energy therapy market in 2017, (estimated target sector $1.25billion). While an element of the energy-based therapies market is for elective procedures treatments for chronic diseases make up the vast majority of the applications of these technologies.
• The number of procedures which can be performed using cryo technology is estimated at over 2.5m annually.

Why did we do it?

The company set itself a task to Develop a safer and more cost effective system that could be used worldwide for treating tumours that would respond in a positive way to the Cryo ablation technique.

Reviewing the existing systems on the market revealed that they had number of issues and failings.

1. The use of high pressure can potentially cause fracturing in the probe which make them potentially very dangerous. Whilst such instances are rare, we considered this to be a risk worth eliminating
2. Gas is expensive and existing systems use a large quantity
3. Probes are single use and make procedures unduly expensive.

How did we do it?

The company reviewed the present systems and looked at how it could develop a new way of cry oblation that would address these issues and make it more attractive to health providers.

The company started to experiment with liquid Nitrogen and vacuum 6 years ago in order to replace the need for a high-pressure system.

By producing a reusable probe this could significantly reduce the cost of procedures and provide a significant source of secondary income to a manufacturer.

The company faced many challenges along its way. The effect vacuum had on a system identified a number of issues and each in turn needed to be addressed.

But with a systematically approach and a huge investment of time, money and effort by the business and its business partners the issues were resolved.

Over time innovation and problem solving became a way of life.