Building GTM and product launch strategy for world’s first portable and collapsible neonatal incubator
Targeted market research and competitive analysis shaped a go-to-market roadmap and accelerated product launch. The incubator later supported more than 1,500 newborn babies in a humanitarian crisis.
Starting point
By 2018, a UK MedTech company had developed a portable and collapsible neonatal incubator that reduced the weight and volume constraints for neonatal transfers. The prototype attracted interest from clinicians and investors around the world, but the leadership team lacked clarity on which product features to prioritize, where to launch, and how to position the device against incumbents in a conservative market.
The United States neonatal transport incubator market was concentrated and dominated by two manufacturers, Dräger and GE Healthcare. The question was not whether the technology was impressive, but where it could realistically win first, which features would solve client’s key operational problems, and how to reach neonatal intensive care units and transport teams that are risk sensitive.
Approach
The company brought in a consulting team that included Bhuvan Maingi, now at Strathen Group, to shape and deliver the work. The mandate was to validate the opportunity, identify the features that mattered most, and build a launch strategy to turn a promising prototype into a credible commercial product.
The engagement team mapped customer segments and decision makers across neonatal intensive care units, neonatal transport teams, private air medical providers, and public emergency services. For each segment, they traced the buyer journey and surfaced key purchasing criteria. To ground this in reality, they conducted over fifty structured interviews with clinicians, neonatal nurses, ambulance leads, and managers across hospital and air or ground providers.
In parallel, the team built a competitor feature matrix that compared the new device to established transport incubators from major manufacturers. The matrix highlighted white space around weight, footprint, and ease of use, and confirmed non-negotiable clinical requirements such as thermoregulation, compatibility with existing stretchers and devices, and battery performance. Features were then prioritized into must-have and nice-to-have, creating a staged specification for engineering that kept the device lightweight and field deployable while meeting safety expectations.
With market structure and feature priorities clear, the team shifted to go-to-market design. Segment economics and brand dynamics in the United States suggested a replacement-driven market with limited near-term white space. The recommended strategy was a two-phase launch: focus first on emerging market hospital partners in Asia and Eastern Europe and non-governmental channels, then pursue targeted United States niches such as private air medical providers and specialized MRI or evacuation use cases. This was translated into a practical access plan built around key opinion leaders, targeted conferences and societies, lighthouse pilots, and a mix of direct sales, selective representatives, and distributors by channel.
The work moved the client from a breakthrough prototype to a disciplined roadmap of segments, specifications, and launch steps grounded in clinician input.
Outcome
The work gave leadership a clear view of where their collapsible incubator could win, and in what sequence. Rather than defaulting to a high-risk push into a saturated United States hospital market, the company prioritized early adopters in emerging market and NGO channels, while reserving targeted United States niches for a second phase.
Product engineering teams received a concrete specification hierarchy that kept the device focused on what mattered most under stress: safe thermoregulation, low weight and compact size, ease of use for teams working in tight spaces such as ambulances, and compatibility with existing transport hardware. Nice-to-have features such as integrated lighting, modular add-ons, and specialized MRI or evacuation variants were placed on a separate roadmap to avoid scope creep and delays.
Commercially, the leadership team gained a practical go-to-market playbook. They knew which conferences and societies to prioritize, which neonatal chiefs and transport directors to target as key opinion leaders, and how to structure pilot discussions and co-development agreements.
Since the work, deployments and pilots have provided external validation of the product, with dozens of units shipped into challenging war-driven environments and reports of 1,500 to 2,000 newborns supported.
For growth and product leaders, the real lesson was to sequence markets by economics and adoption risk, rather than by size or prestige.
This work continues to shape how Strathen Group approaches growth in complex MedTech markets, grounding product strategy in real clinician behavior, staging market entry by adoption risk, and treating go-to-market as a disciplined roadmap rather than a launch event.
