So in the beginning, we had 200 needs, and that was just huge to grapple with.
But using the first round, we quickly narrowed it down to about 57
So in Round 1, we used two factors – one subjective and one objective.
The subjective factor was just personal preference and we give it a waiting of about 70 percent.
And the objective factor was incidents, and we have different scorings for that.
So if it’s above 100,000 incidents per year, we actually have it before; and in different
stages – say, for example, 50,000 – we have three; and then 10,000 is two; and then
less than 100 is one, for example.
So we looked at how each of the needs scored, and we decided on a cutoff based on the slopes.
And so this plot shows the rate of change of the score in the need.
And you can see that clear break points.
So in Round 2, we used a little bit more complicated equation.
we decided that we wanted to be purely objective.
Basically, we added on four more objective factors.
They are market size, patient impact, provider impact, and technical feasibility.
And on top of that…
We actually grouped them up into a blue sky mixed and incremental needs, and each of them
got different weightages depending on the different – how important we thought that
these were – the factors were for each of these needs.
then we added up all the scores from the Round 1 score and each of the factors from the Round
2 scores and times the weighing factors, and come up with the final score for Round 2.
as we keep adding more and more factors into the equation, the subjective proportion really
decreases quite dramatically.
we are really trying to use the information facts to back our needs up to decide on the
real – on the need that we really want to work on.
You can see, this is the part after Round 2, two rounds of screening, filtering.
And then you can see like how the needs nicely fit into all the fit baskets.
And then we decided that we will take somewhere the point, which makes sense when you see
like a huge drop, or huge gap, between the two needs.
And for the blue sky, we see like huge drop after the second one; and the incremental
is here.
You can see a clear bend here.
And a mix will be here.
And then as a group, we decided that this will be the nice point for us to have a combination
of top needs from all the three baskets.
That’s how we come down to our top 18 needs after Round 2.
When we come down to Round 3, we edit in one more objective factor which is the needs met.
And for this one, we also make a scoring system from one to four –One being there is a lot
of solutions available in the market, and four being there’s no effective solutions
in the market.
So here, we weighted each of – for blue, mixed, and incremental, just a weightage of
one.
So an equal weightage.
And actually after this, we plotted the graph again.
From 18, we actually cut it down to 8, and we decided that the cutoff point would be
here where there’s a slight drop in the scorings.
So for Round 4… … the main question was to understand – was
to know how well these diseases are understood in literature, because we didn’t want to
go after a problem that’s not so well understood because it’s going to be hard to formulate
concepts for problems that are not well understood.
So the main concentration in Round 4 was to look at the pathophysiology understanding;
and again we ranked it four-to-one based on how well it was understood in literature.
On top of that, we actually also presented all these top eight needs to the surgeons
that we actually followed.
So that way, we got feedback from them.
You can see that there’s a nice drop here again.
So we get our top three here, because between three and four, there’s quite a huge drop
in the scoring for the needs.
The needs-filtering process can be really, really overwhelming at the beginning.
But along the way, we realized that the more systematic you are throughout a process, the
more confident you feel at the end of the stage.
So we spent a month in the immersion process and spent many countless nights doing the
filtering.
Actually, in fact, we spent way more time doing the filtering than observation.
And we finally cut down to the number of needs – top three needs because we are very comfortable
with.
So now we are quite excited to move forward.