How do you shape a market for AI-assisted ultrasound?
Niche idea → program design, donor narrative, and playbook
The problem
'AI-assisted ultrasound will help pregnant women in low-income countries.' Probably true. But an organisation can't fund 'probably true.' The space was new and thinly mapped: no clear read on which devices were real, no evidence on whether the clinics that needed them could actually use them, and nothing a donor could write a cheque against. The idea had to become a program someone could fund and run.
What I did
Started on supply: who actually makes these devices, and which of them are real. Mapped manufacturers against the things that decide whether a device survives contact with a rural clinic: commercial terms, evidence of real deployments, existing partnerships, service networks. Then demand: went through the literature on prior pilots to pull out what had worked, built a demand assessment, and took it into several countries to hear directly from the people who would have to deploy it. Fused both sides into three deliverables: a market-shaping strategy for internal use, a donor-facing narrative for fundraising, and a product annex holding the detailed breakdowns.
Outcomes
What I learned
A promising idea and a fundable program are not the same thing. The gap between them is supply detail, demand evidence, and a narrative a donor can act on.
The test for a device is whether it survives contact with a rural clinic: service network, commercial terms, someone to call when it breaks.
A demand assessment run from a desk is a guess. The useful version means sitting with the people who'd deploy the thing.
Got a similar problem?
Tell me what you're working on. I'll tell you if it's a fit.
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