5 Things I Heard at a MedTech Founders Summit That I Can't Stop Thinking About
By: N. Adam Brown, MD MBA
Last week in London, I attended the R&D Partners MedTech Founders Summit. Two panels, one evening and a lot of honesty.
The room had real builders in it. Jeremy Wheeler of BioCaptiva, developing liquid biopsy technologies that could replace invasive sampling methods. Dr. Paul Bhogal of Ceroflo, working on a next-generation intracranial stent for stroke prevention. Dr. Cormac Farrelly of LaNua Medical, building an embolization device for vascular disease and cancer treatment. Simon Mifsud of Garland Surgical, behind the TriActiv Hip; a total hip replacement designed to last a lifetime. And alongside them, investors and commercialization experts who've watched companies succeed and fail in the US market up close.
One panel focused on building MedTech with limited capital. The other on what it actually takes to commercialize in the US. Different conversations, same underlying tensions.
Here's what stayed with me:
1. The cheapest market research is a conversation
Jeremy Wheeler said it plainly, and nobody in the room pushed back: talking to the right people (providers, payers, patients, policymakers) is the most underused tool in early-stage MedTech. Not because founders don't know this. Because they tend to skip it when capital is tight and the pressure to move is high.
He also shared something harder to sit with. He described a £2 million trial that didn't deliver what was hoped; not because the technology was wrong, but because the institutional environment wasn't ready. The NHS has its own rhythms, its own resistance, and its own timeline. That's not something you can talk your way around, but it is something you can understand earlier, before you've committed the capital.
2. You're not fighting the market. You're fighting what people already believe.
Dr. Paul Bhogal introduced a concept he called "genetic memory": the deeply embedded assumptions that clinical teams carry about how things should work. It's institutional, largely invisible, and doesn't shift easily regardless of how good the evidence is.
His approach wasn't to fight it directly. Build credibility through publications, education, and sustained relationships. Find the clinicians whose minds are genuinely open and invest in those connections over time. It's a slower strategy than most founders want, but it tends to be more durable than trying to force a belief system to change on your timeline.
3. Intellectual humility might be your most underrated asset
Also Dr. Bhogal, who was having a very good night.
He described his approach to navigating the US market as simply seeking out people who knew more than him and asking them real questions. Not as a networking tactic. As a genuine operating philosophy. "The wealth of knowledge in the US is enormous and people want to share it."
It came up in different forms across the evening. The founders who seemed to be making the most progress weren't necessarily the ones with the most resources but were the ones most willing to admit what they didn't know yet and treat that as an advantage rather than a liability.
4. FDA clearance is a milestone. Not a business.
One line from the evening stuck with me more than most. Yara Almazzi of Crane Venture said it simply: "Clearance isn't adoption."
It sounds obvious written down. But the stories that followed made clear just how easy it is to lose sight of in practice.
David Van Tuydom of Head Diagnostics described a situation where a device that worked (clinically sound, properly cleared) ran into friction in the field because the clinical team using it hadn't been properly trained on it yet. Once that was addressed, things moved. But it was a reminder that a great product can underperform in the hands of people who haven't been set up to use it well.
Natalie Pankova of Zinc VC made a related point from the investor side: market selection matters as much as product quality. Some markets demand enormous time and energy before they yield anything and founders don't always ask early enough whether that investment makes sense for where their company is right now. The right product in the wrong market at the wrong moment is still a problem.
The founders who seem to navigate this best think about the total product lifecycle from the beginning, not just regulatory approval, but payer alignment, clinical onboarding, training, and what real-world adoption actually looks like on the ground. Not as a phase two consideration but as part of the original plan.
5. The US market has more doors than most founders realize
One thing the commercialization panel kept coming back to was how much optionality actually exists in the US market once you stop thinking about it as a single pathway.
The US healthcare market sits at $5.3 trillion, 18% of GDP. But the panelists weren't really talking about size. They were talking about the variety of ways in. Conference presence as a relationship-building tool well before you're ready to sell. Physical presence in the right geography shifting how investors and clinicians engage with you. Europe as a testing ground, if you're careful about how you price there and what that does to your US positioning later.
The founders who navigate it well don't stumble onto the right door by accident. They do enough groundwork to know which one was theirs to begin with.
None of what came out of that room that evening was particularly secret. That's almost the point. These are lessons that take years and significant capital to learn on your own… and a good evening to hear from people who already paid that price.
