A Passion for Partnering with Medtech Startups: Bringing Life-Changing Innovations to Market with Strategic Communications

There are many rea­sons why I went into the field of health com­mu­ni­ca­tion and there are many more rea­sons why I’ve stayed in the field. One of those rea­sons is that I, along with the oth­er mem­bers of the Bell­mont Part­ners Health team, get to work with some of the coolest com­pa­nies – some­times long before they even have a prod­uct on the mar­ket. 

Yep, I’m talk­ing about star­tups. And liv­ing in the great Med­ical Alley region of the coun­try, I’m specif­i­cal­ly talk­ing about med­ical device and tech­nol­o­gy star­tups. Every day, my col­leagues and I get to work with com­pa­nies whose tech­nolo­gies are not only sav­ing and improv­ing peo­ples’ lives, but also some­times in a way that’s nev­er, ever been done before. 

Some­times there is a mis­con­cep­tion that a com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy isn’t impor­tant at the ear­li­est of stages, but we have wit­nessed first-hand time and time again how com­pa­nies that imple­ment strong com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies, and start build­ing their brand and dri­ving aware­ness of their inno­va­tion ear­ly on, lay a strong foun­da­tion for what­ev­er comes next for the com­pa­ny.  

Recent­ly, my col­league Shel­li Lis­sick and I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present to an incred­i­ble group of ear­ly-stage com­pa­nies in the med­ical device and sen­sor-based health mon­i­tor­ing space, who were work­ing with a new MedTech Accel­er­a­tor pro­gram orga­nized by Inno­va­tion Nor­way, DNB and Back Bay and sup­port­ed by the Des­ti­na­tion Med­ical Cen­ter and Mayo Clin­ic Inno­va­tion Exchange, to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to com­mer­cial­ize in the U.S.  

In it, we shared more about our work devel­op­ing and exe­cut­ing strate­gic mes­sag­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for a range of clients bring­ing to mar­ket inno­va­tions in every­thing from urol­o­gy and ortho­pe­dics to oncol­o­gy and crit­i­cal care. We cov­ered a lot of ground – dis­cussing top­ics includ­ing brand and mes­sag­ing; con­tent devel­op­ment; social media strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion; media rela­tions; investor pre­sen­ta­tions; thought lead­er­ship; soci­ety, trade and investor con­fer­ences; cri­sis pre­pared­ness and man­age­ment, and more.  

Above all: Track­ing results and suc­cess for these things mat­ters. A lot. Set­ting clear goals and KPIs and mea­sur­ing progress allows for the abil­i­ty to stop doing things along the way that aren’t work­ing, turn up things that are, and ensure that resources are being used effi­cient­ly and go as far as pos­si­ble. 

On that note, we also touched on how star­tups can eco­nom­i­cal­ly incor­po­rate strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Star­tups typ­i­cal­ly rely on grants and indi­vid­ual investor and ven­ture cap­i­tal fund­ing, and in the ear­ly stages, those pre­cious funds are ear­marked for cru­cial prod­uct devel­op­ment and clin­i­cal tri­al work. Know­ing this, we work close­ly with our clients to deter­mine a bud­get that works best for them and offer as many scal­able options as pos­si­ble for a flex­i­ble engage­ment. We also advise them on where to invest from a com­mu­ni­ca­tions stand­point. Being good part­ners to our clients is impor­tant to us and that’s why it’s part of our name. We work togeth­er as an exten­sion of our clients’ teams towards a shared end goal of mov­ing for­ward impor­tant, inno­v­a­tive med­ical tech­nolo­gies to help save lives. 

Do you have a life-chang­ing inno­va­tion and are look­ing for help to bring it mar­ket? We’d love to hear more about it! Con­tact us for a com­pli­men­ta­ry PR strat­e­gy ses­sion and brain­storm.