Challenge  

Women in the United States suffering from benign uterine tumors usually face two choices: cope with severe pain and heavy menstruation or undergo major surgery — typically a hysterectomy to remove the entire uterus. Neither option is desirable, especially for women interested in bearing children.

However, a women’s health startup recently developed a breakthrough technology to treat uterine fibroids noninvasively. While the leadership team believed it had a game-changing technology and a strong understanding of its clinical potential, they wanted third-party validation of the therapy’s true market potential prior to launching it or negotiating with possible acquirers.

Solution 

To evaluate the market size, identify barriers to adoption, and estimate the technology’s total value, Guidehouse conducted a strategic market assessment. This proprietary methodology utilizes comprehensive, fact-based data to examine the critical factors of adoption, including disease epidemiology, new value proposition vs. current standard of care, healthcare economics, patient care pathways, technology adoption dynamics, and the psychology of clinician behavior change.

The team needed to determine how many women struggled with symptoms severe enough to seek medical intervention; and of those, how many had the type of fibroids the startup’s new technology could treat. To find out, Guidehouse looked holistically at uterine fibroid patients and evaluated the criteria most relevant to the new procedure, including:

• Discomfort severe enough to compel a patient to seek medical treatment.
• Age or situation in which a patient preferred to maintain fertility.
• Location of the fibroids, as the technology could best treat only certain fibroid types.

Lastly, Guidehouse assessed the barriers to market adoption, and found many were nonissues for the new technology. In fact, several factors were in its adoption favor:

• Demographic data indicated women with the financial means to pursue other options were less likely to get a hysterectomy than those in lower income brackets.
• A large patient pool of insured women who regularly sought preventive OB-GYN care existed.
• Because no such technology existed in the United States, and this new therapy alone could prevent women from living with severe pain and/or heavy menstruation or undergoing a hysterectomy, the new technology was well-positioned to become the standard of care for treatable patients.

The strategic market assessment uncovered an initial U.S. market potential of $428 million in annual revenue by 2028. That estimate represented 24% of the addressable global patient population.

Impact