What is CTSs share of the overall CABG market?

2.31%. Of the approximately 16,000 beating heart procedures that

were performed in 1997, 8,000 were performed with CTS
technology, which gives the company an approximately 50% share
of the beating heart business. But there were 330,000 CABG
procedures done with the traditional heart-lung machine, so only
2.31%, relatively low penetration, of the entire CABG market.
Is there a recognized need for CTSs product? Explain.
Yes, definitely.
A standard CABG procedure involved a surgery of 3 to 5 hours
and a total cost of approximately $36,000. The total inhospital recovery period, including 1 to 3 days of intensive
care, was approximately 7 days, and the average recuperation
period post-hospital discharge ranged anywhere from 4-10
weeks. Patients were also subject to the risk of severe
complications associated with the sternotomy. Specifically,
there was a 1.1% risk of post-operative infection in the chest
area.
And more importantly, the use of heart-lung machine might
cause many severe complications which associated with the
CABG procedure.
Therefore, a less invasive and traumatic procedure are needed for
the patients goods.
What are the costs and benefits of adopting this new
technology? (who receives the benefits, and who pays the
costs?)
Benefits:
o For patients: the benefits include reduced trauma, fewer
complications, faster recovery period, shorter hospital
stays, the reduced neurological problems and lower
overall cost.
o For health care systems: Less attention paid to postoperation care.
Costs:
o For hospitals: when introduce a device that adds $1,000$1,500 to the basic cost of the CABG procedure, some
hospital purchasing agent feels like their margin just
dropped by the same amount.
o For surgeons: the time and resource spend on learning
the new technology.
o Fixed reimbursement. Uncertainty of benefits. Market
size.
What are the steps in the adoption process for this
technology?
Firstly, find the surgeons that are receptive to new techniques.
Those can come from the leads collected from meetings or
responses from sending out brochures. These surgeons will
help the company get the hand-off data.

As the company already got some data, then they reach out
for those early adopters who have both reputation and
financial ability to try out the new technology.
After the company has got some leads, they invite them to
attend a two-day course where the technology is explained
and get hand-on experience with the technology.
The company gets responses from the attendees about the
experience then adjust and improve their technology to
convince more surgeons to use it.
As the case data accumulated, the company get more data to
tell the story and become more convincing and reliable. Then
the technology is gradually adopted by the whole market.
Decision criteria: How should CTS define success over the
next two years?
Double or even triple its revenues.
Keep the current market share of 50% in beating heart
market, and try to get at least 25% more.
Train at least 1,000 more surgeons to drive the adoption
process.
No loss in operations, turn it into margins, at least hit the
balance.
Proactively drive the market to improve the awareness among
the patients and surgeons.
Successfully launch new 4th even 5th generations of the
product in next 2 years.
How should CTS position its product? (write a positioning
statement)
CTS should position its product with surgeons.
Our product provides surgeons the most reliable and best
CABG procedure. The surgeons will have access to all vessels of a
beating heart! No heart-lung machine needed anymore. Our product
can bring your patients reduced trauma, fewer complications, faster
recovery period, shorter hospital stays, the reduced neurological
problems and lower overall cost. By using our product, the whole
operation will become easier, bringing your patients a less painful
experience.
We provide training for the surgeons to learn how to use our
technology and we have dataset of cases to learn hand-on
experiences. By learning and adopting our technology, you can treat
more patients and meanwhile reducing their pain.
No more heart-lung machine! We know you dont want your
patients to undergo the risks along with the machine!