The overall market size for dermatology devices is around 6 billion dollars and expected to grow to 11 billion by 2019. Our device will tap into this growing market and be used to help detect skin cancer. One in 50 americans will have some form of skin cancer. There is approximately 5.5 million skin biopsies performed annually in the United States. The cost of such a biopsy can cost anywhere between $150 to $1,000. A large number of these biopsies produce negative test results, meaning that there is no cancer. This is a big waste of money for insurance providers and our device could help reduce the number of biopsies that have to be read. Our device will be attractive to buyers because it will help reduce wasteful spending and help give dermatologist critical information much quicker.
After we have developed a working device, we plan to work with a manufacturing company that specializes in imaging to build our device. We also plan on companies specializing in sales, marketing, and distribution until we can create our own departments to help in these areas. Looking at the current competition, a device like ours would sell for around two thousand dollars. Based on cost of building and selling the device to be around $1,200, we are looking at a profit of around eight hundred dollars per unit. We also plan to sell disposables for our device and software upgrades. The disposables will be used on a single patient then replaced and software upgrades will try and be pushed out every year. We have not yet formed a for-profit company, but we do plan to do this in the future.
