Acorai AB: Marketing “Listening to Your Heart With AI"

Acorai AB, a Swedish medical start-up, had developed a heart monitor designed to meet the needs of cardiologists worldwide. The portable heart monitor had demonstrated in clinical trials its equivalence to the prevailing gold standard of invasive blood pressure management. The establishment of proof of parity was a big step forward for the company, though the clinical trials were preliminary and the product on hand was only a prototype.

The director of Sales and Marketing at Acorai AB was keen to establish product–market fit, and to resolve another dilemma: Should the start-up stay only in Sweden, limiting its activities to local clinical studies, local clinical research, local patients, and local cardiologists? Or should it pursue a higher profile by conducting clinical studies in the United States—the largest health-care market in the world—and then the European Union, as part of getting regulatory approval in both geographies, before launching the product globally?