Innovation, Design, & Development

We help medtech companies unlock growth opportunities through breakthrough products, services, experiences, and software—from concept to prototype to patient.

Our multidisciplinary team of experts across strategy, analytics, science, medicine, and world-class medical product design (in partnership with McKinsey Design and our award-winning agencies LUNAR and Veryday) helps our clients innovate faster and at scale. Whether we are creating a new medical device or reimagining a patient journey, tackling healthcare’s toughest challenges is our primary goal. We apply a multilever, user-centric approach that includes portfolio and process optimization, customer-experience and product design, and agile transformation for timely, cost-efficient go-to-market strategies.

100+ design awards

in healthcare and medtech, including the prestigious 2014 Red Dot: Design Team of the Year award

80+ years of design

experience cumulative across projects, with more than 50 percent focused on healthcare and medtech, and more than 300 patents developed

7 out of the 10 largest medtech companies

served on the topic of design

2000+ client projects

in innovation and product development completed over the past five years

Examples of our work

30 percent revenue improvement:

A 2-week design diagnostic helped protect and improve a product line’s future market share through strategic and financial assessments and rapid ideations for new short- and long-term features.

25 percent margin improvement through the design-to-value (DTV) approach:

A medtech company conducted ethnographic research on the design of its existing capital equipment to uncover unmet customer needs. This led to a revised hardware design with 30 percent lower costs, 5 percent market-share increase, and international design awards.

$200 million captured from portfolio optimization:

Through patent scans, warranty analysis, review of technical requirements, and ethnographic research of 500 patients, a global drug-delivery company narrowed its injection-device portfolio by 40 percent, which freed up resources for feature enhancements of more highly valued products.

Featured capabilities

We have more than 300 world-class designers and innovators who provide physical, digital, and service design as well as more than 200 people dedicated to engineering and product development. In addition, we bring together the best tools, such as the following, and experience to deliver lasting impact:

Rapid design diagnostic: A two- to three-week structured approach to assess the value at stake from improved design, rapid ideation of short- and mid-term design opportunities, and an initial strategic, financial, and feasibility assessment
Innovation garages: Dedicated spaces used to generate new business models, distinctive customer experiences, and new medtech products or services rapidly
McKinsey’s DTV Labs: Centers of engineering expertise used to conduct competitor-product teardowns and cost modelling
Quantified Experience Design: A big-data—driven design approach to create better end-to-end experiences for users and patients
R&D assessment: A proprietary survey to assess and benchmark medtech companies’ product-development performance across 24 dimensions and 140 questions

Learn more about how we can help you

The value of design

Is your company harnessing the value of design? Complete a five-minute self-assessment (requires email address).

Rapid design diagnostic

Do you want to learn more about how you can run a rapid design diagnostic to assess your value at stake coming from design? Contact us to learn more.

Immediate cash injection

Are you looking for an immediate cash injection? Could it come from redesigning your existing products? Contact us to learn more.

Featured experts

Related Practice

McKinsey Design

McKinsey Design’s diverse team of designers, engineers, and thinkers are designing and developing beautiful, ingenious, and charismatic medical products and experiences. Our award-winning design agencies, LUNAR and Veryday, have been granted hundreds of patents and received internationally recognized design awards, including the 2014 Red Dot: Design Team of the Year award.