Medical Device Link.

BUSINESS

In an environment where technology is changing rapidly it is essential to have tools that can be used to assess the pace of change, predict new directions and support the process of defining products that can be more competitive in the market place. Roadmapping is one of these tools.

There are different kinds of roadmaps. One kind simply looks at technology trends in terms of the performance and properties of the underlying materials and processes. A second kind takes the technology trends further, maps these into the products that will be manufactured and illustrates how that product performance will improve. A third kind looks at the evolving market needs and predicts what new functionality and performance will be delivered as the technology develops, but does not necessarily define how those functions
will be delivered.

Roadmapping can benefit nearly all participants in a market place: companies throughout the supply chain from materials suppliers to finished-goods manufacturers; research institutes; policy makers; and the capital investment and the user communities. In all cases, having an accurate prediction of trends over a period covering the next 5–10 years, or even longer, can be an invaluable guide to opportunities or threats that will affect individual companies or the industry as a whole.

In some cases, the roadmap can be so well regarded that it assumes the status of a “law” such as the so-called “Moore’s Law” for the semiconductor industry. This predicted that semiconductor microchip performance would double every 18 months and over the past 30 years it has become a self-
fulfilling prophecy. The predictions have become goals that the whole industry has adopted.¹

Essentials of roadmapping

Figure 1: (click to enlarge) Schematic roadmap.

Any roadmap uses time as the prime parameter, which is usually shown along the horizontal axis of the roadmap chart. Some roadmaps fail to quantify the time axis and merely indicate the future direction. These are clearly of lesser value than charts that map out the predictions on a calibrated timescale. Because most medical product developments take two or more years to reach the market, the roadmap scope is usually 5, 10 or even 15 years into the future.

The structure of the roadmap in the vertical axis depends on the type of roadmap being attempted. Figure 1 shows a schematic roadmap where technology trends are indicated in the lower portion, the middle portion maps these into product performance and features, and the upper portion relates these to evolving market needs.

In a technology-push situation, the linkages and relationships are shown moving up the chart and from left to right. In a market-pull situation, the emerging market needs are treated more as the drivers that set the priorities for research and development (R&D) in technology and they are used to select the critical technologies that need to be developed. In this type of chart, there will be linkages from the upper level of the chart back into the technology layers below. These linkages are often the most strategically valuable output from the roadmapping process. Companies that use the roadmapping process will often keep these priorities confidential and hence most published roadmaps have little information in this area.

Generating roadmaps

Figure 2: (click to enlarge) The roadmap process.

A roadmap is not only a collation of important data, but is the output of a process to formalise, assess and capture opinion from experts concerning future trends. There are many different processes being used and all can produce valuable results. Figure 2 shows the range of roadmap techniques characterised by the person, days of effort needed and the number of contributing personnel.

A structured questionnaire allows input to be collected from large numbers of contributors, but provides no opportunity for interaction. Conversely, workshops can give participants opportunities for questions and to share insights, but are difficult to organise for more than 30 participants.

A good approach is the research team method with key person interviews. This involves conducting extensive interviews with experts selected on the basis of their standing within the industry. The research team conducting the interviews are themselves application sector or technology specialists (or both) and hence are in a position to probe more deeply during the interviews than those relying on a structured interviewing script.

Roadmap examples

The quantity of examples of medical roadmaps that can be presented here is necessarily limited. However, roadmaps are available on the Internet and some can be downloaded. Some useful sites are described below.

In November 2005, the European Union funded project Nano Road Map (NRM) published its nanotechnology roadmaps for several industry sectors including one for medicine.² The roadmap on medicine was compiled over a period of two years by a team with contributors from eight countries. The method employed was a Delphi-structured questionnaire combined with opportunities for feedback in a series of workshops. Details of the method can be found on the website. The results were presented in a series of histograms representing the frequency of answers to structured multiple-choice questions. One of the subjects treated in detail by the NRM Project was drug encapsulation, delivery and targeting.

All of the participants in the Delphi panel were of the opinion that nanotechnology will provide pharma-ceuticals with suitable properties that cannot be achieved by any other means. The experts identified inorganic nanoparticles as the most appropriate type of particles to meet their needs, followed by polymer nanoparticles, nanocrystals and then liposomes. Of the Delphi panel, 70% believed that cancer therapy would be highly affected by nanotechnology and that efficient target-oriented therapy would move from basic research in 2005 to applied research by 2010 and reach first clinical applications by 2015.

The United States National Institute of Health has produced a Roadmap for Medical Research that is presented on its website.³ This is still under development, but is a useful source of background material as the contributors are debating the role that emerging technologies may have in the different medical applications.
A recent roadmap on blood-glucose monitoring was presented in Medical Device Technology.⁴ This divided 15 competing technologies into three product classes and also indicated that the window of opportunity for sensor-based monitoring could be closed by a genetically engineered cure for Type 1 diabetes or another completely disruptive technology in approximately 20 years time.

A further useful site is that of Industry Canada where roadmaps for medical imaging can be found.⁵

Figure 3: (click to enlarge) Drug delivery roadmap.

Figure 3 shows a roadmap for drug delivery that is organised in a different fashion, but again illustrates the time windows in which a number of technologies are expected to reach the market. The horizontal extent of any particular technology bar represents the period from first market entry over which enhancements will emerge. In this example, the relative impacts of micro- and nanotechnology are highlighted by the colour codes.

A living process

The value of a roadmap can be increased if it can be used as the framework for a regular review of the market and technology space. This was the case for the semiconductor industry roadmaps mentioned earlier. These were updated every year and thus became a valuable indicator of the rate of progress in the industry.

Dr J. Malcolm Wilkinson is Managing Director, Technology for Industry Ltd, E-Space North, 181 Wisbech Road, Littleport, Ely CB6 1RA, UK, tel. +44 1353 865 400, e-mail: jmw@tfi-ltd.co.uk www.tfi-ltd.co.uk