Practice

The seven areas below are not separate services. In a complex program, a design decision is a regulatory decision, a clinical endpoint is a reimbursement argument, and a manufacturing choice is a financing constraint. TEPKOS works at the level where those dependencies are resolved.

TEPKOS draws on two decades in medical technology. It takes on engagements that call for unconventional solutions to complex problems: first-of-kind technologies, unresolved regulatory territory, and programs whose difficulty lies in how their parts interact.

Clinical

The decisive questions are usually clinical: whether the need is real and durable, whether the evidence can be generated at acceptable cost and time, and whether the physicians who shape practice will adopt what results.

  • Validation of unmet clinical need
  • Product definition and management
  • Key opinion leader relationships
  • Preclinical and clinical evidence strategy
  • Endpoints that serve regulatory and reimbursement ends at once

Research and development

At the strategic level, development is a question of what to build, in what order, and what the technology must prove before the next increment of capital is committed.

  • Technical diligence on novel technologies
  • Technology and platform strategy
  • Architectural decisions and their downstream consequences
  • Retirement of critical technical risk
  • Development sequenced against regulatory and capital milestones

Business strategy

Novel technologies rarely fit existing market definitions. Strategy begins with the market a technology creates, and often with the company built to hold it.

  • Market definition for new categories
  • Positioning against the incumbent standard of care
  • Business model design
  • Formation and development of new medical technology companies
  • Strategic partnerships

Regulatory

Regulatory strategy matters most where precedent is thin. The choice of pathway carries consequences for evidence, timeline, labeling, and ultimately value.

  • Pathway strategy in the absence of clear precedent
  • Agency engagement strategy
  • Submission architecture
  • Prosecution through review
  • Integration of regulatory, clinical, and technical strategy

Production

Early manufacturing decisions fix cost, quality, and scalability for the life of a product. They belong in the strategy from the outset.

  • Manufacturing and supply strategy
  • Make-or-partner decisions
  • Scale-up of novel processes
  • Build-out of production operations
  • Quality system strategy

Commercialization

Clearance does not confer adoption. Adoption turns on reimbursement, clinical workflow, and the economics of every party between the device and the patient.

  • Launch strategy and sequencing
  • Coverage, coding, and payment strategy
  • Commercial model and channel architecture
  • Strategic commercial partnerships
  • Post-market evidence strategy

Capital strategy

Capital is most efficient when each raise is matched to the risk it retires. Financing strategy follows from the technical, clinical, and regulatory plan, and shapes it in return.

  • Financing strategy
  • Capital planning against risk-retiring milestones
  • Positioning for investor and strategic diligence
  • Strategic transactions