Correspondence: Alan Brown, Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Healthcare Northern Ireland Bioengineering CentreUniversity of Ulster, Shore Road Newtownabbey BT37 0QB, Northern Ireland. Tel: +44 28 9036 8925; Fax: +44 28 9036 6863; e-mail: a.brown@ulster.ac.uk

¹is a research fellow on the MATCH programme at the University of Ulster. He joined the University after nine years in industry, where he worked in manufacturing and new product management in the high-technology sector. He holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine. His current research interests include optimising business processes and new product development with specific interest in Tissue Engineering applications.

²is Director of the MATCH hub at the University of Ulster, and leads the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering research group at NIBEC. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (CChem, FRSC) and is past President of the UK Society for Biomaterials.

³was appointed as a Lecturer in the University of Ulster in 2005. He completed his PhD in Polymer Engineering in 2000 and his research interests include medical polymers, nanocomposite systems and the application of design of experiment methodologies.

⁴joined Brunel in 2001 after 16½ years in industry to develop concepts around value propositions, especially for information and communication, in healthcare delivery. He is currently the Principal Investigator in the £3.6m MATCH programme, a collaboration between five universities that is developing new methods for valuing and assessing user needs in the healthcare devices sector.

⁵is a lecturer in Strategic Management and teaches Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the University of Ulster's Faculty of Business & Management. His research interests include academic entrepreneurship, innovation in higher education and regional innovation policy.

Received 5 December 2007; Revised 5 December 2007; Published online 18 April 2008.

Abstract

Recent research has shown that the Experience Curve can be used to describe price trends associated with medical devices, and that these trends are consistent with those observed in other sectors. This paper presents data obtained from 20 medical device case studies that were found to have Experience Curve slopes of between 65 and 98 per cent. Statistically significant correlations have been established between the slope of the Experience Curve and the corresponding market conditions and product characteristics such as the length of time since the product first gained market approval and the market revenue growth rate. The potential predictive nature of these data is discussed in relation to the corresponding product lifecycle. Importantly, this research reports, for the first time, a two-phase Experience Curve for medical device products, where the rate of price decrease changes at a point in time in response to a definable market variable. The implications of such two-phase Experience Curves and the various market conditions that might trigger this behaviour are discussed with regard to the possible impact on healthcare product marketing strategies. As such, these findings demonstrate the value of the Experience Curve relationship to those developing, selling and purchasing healthcare technologies.