Case Study: Medtech Technology Scouting Case Study: Entering CGM

This medtech technology scouting case study shows how a structured, patent-led scouting method behaves when a medical device company needs to enter a franchise that a few incumbents already dominate. It is a representative scenario built from our standard medical device technology scouting method and from publicly verifiable market and patent data — not a named client account — so the figures illustrate how the method works rather than reporting one confidential matter.

The Challenge

The company in this scenario made diabetes-care hardware and wanted to enter continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), one of the fastest-growing corners of medtech. The commercial pull was obvious: the CGM market was worth roughly $4.98 billion in 2024 by industry estimates, Dexcom alone reported $4.033 billion of revenue that year, and in 2024 the FDA cleared the first over-the-counter CGM — opening a consumer lane beyond the prescription market.

The problem was ownership. The CGM patent cluster is heavily concentrated: industry patent-share analyses put Dexcom at around 44% and Abbott around 14% of CGM device patents. Building a me-too sensor into that thicket risked walking straight into a blocking claim. Leadership did not need more market enthusiasm; it needed to know which external technologies could let it enter without infringing the dominant portfolios — and which were actually licensable.

Our Approach

We ran the mandate through our standard medical device technology scouting method, anchored in the primary patent record rather than vendor decks. The work moved through four steps:

• Need statement — translating ‘enter CGM’ into three specific technical problems to solve: factory calibration (removing fingerstick calibration), multi-week sensor longevity, and non-enzymatic sensing to design around enzyme-based claims.
• Global technology search — searching EPO, USPTO and WIPO records plus company and university portfolios for external assets addressing each problem, mapping who held what and when key claims expire.
• Candidate scorecard — ranking each external technology on technical fit, IP strength, freedom-to-operate headroom against the Dexcom and Abbott clusters, and licensing availability.
• Partner and licence shortlist — narrowing to the assets worth a real approach, with a design-around route attached to each.

What the Research Found

Read against the primary record, the field split more usefully than the headline concentration suggested. The core sensor-and-algorithm claims were exactly as crowded as expected — a poor place to enter head-on. But the same search surfaced openings one layer down, where the dominant assignees were not filing heavily and smaller players and universities held early, licensable positions.

Three of those openings mattered. Non-enzymatic and optical sensing approaches sat largely outside the enzyme-based claim families that anchor the incumbent portfolios. A cluster of factory-calibration methods was owned by specialists open to licensing rather than by the majors. And several sensor-longevity techniques had core patents close enough to expiry to plan a launch around. Each was a candidate the headline leaderboard had hidden.

The exercise also reframed how ‘strong’ a position had to be. Because the incumbent portfolios are concentrated in the sensor-and-algorithm core, an external technology did not need a dominant patent estate to be useful — it needed a defensible claim at an interface the majors had left open, plus a licensing counterparty willing to deal. That shifted the scoring away from raw patent counts and toward freedom-to-operate headroom and deal availability, the two axes that actually govern whether a differentiated product can ship.

The Outcome

The scenario deliverable was a ranked shortlist of six external technologies, each scored for fit and freedom to operate, and each paired with a design-around route around the dominant CGM claims. Two of the six offered a viable path to a differentiated product without licensing from a direct competitor — the outcome the scouting brief was commissioned to find.

Just as important was what the study ruled out. By pricing the crowded core cluster honestly, it stopped the company spending R&D on a me-too sensor that would have collided with a blocking claim — a decision worth far more than its cost, and one that only the primary patent record could support.

What This Means for Similar Matters

Two lessons generalise from this medtech technology scouting case study. First, concentration at the headline level rarely tells you where to enter; the licensable openings almost always sit one layer below the leaderboard, at interfaces and in adjacent approaches the majors are not defending. Second, a scouting study is as valuable for what it rules out as for what it surfaces — a credible ‘do not build this’ is often the highest-return line in the report.

How the Scorecard Ranked Six CGM Technologies

The value of a scouting study is only as good as the scorecard behind it, so each of the forty-plus candidate technologies was rated on the same four axes before any made the shortlist. The first was technical fit: did the asset actually solve one of the three defined problems — factory calibration, multi-week longevity or non-enzymatic sensing — rather than merely touch the CGM space.

The second axis was IP strength, read from the primary record: how broad and how enforceable the underlying claims were, and how much term remained. The third, and the one that reordered the ranking most, was freedom-to-operate headroom against the dominant clusters. With industry analyses putting Dexcom at roughly 44% and Abbott around 14% of CGM device patents, a candidate that looked attractive in isolation could still sit inside a blocking claim; only a technology with genuine clearance against those estates earned a high mark.

The fourth axis was licensing availability — whether the owner was a specialist or university open to a deal rather than a direct competitor with every reason to refuse. It was this axis that separated the six shortlisted technologies from otherwise-promising assets locked inside the majors’ own portfolios.

Set against the wider market, the stakes justified the rigour. The CGM franchise was worth roughly $4.98 billion in 2024, and the FDA’s clearance of the first over-the-counter CGM that year opened a consumer lane that made a clean entry route more valuable still. Scoring every candidate on the same four axes is what turned a long list of interesting patents into a ranked, decision-ready shortlist a board could act on.

Data Sources

The market and patent data referenced above comes from:

• Dexcom — Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results — Dexcom 2024 revenue of $4.033 billion, used to size the CGM franchise the scenario company sought to enter.
• FDA — Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Enabled Medical Devices — The regulatory backdrop for digital-health and monitoring devices, including the 1,016 AI/ML-enabled devices authorised by the end of 2024.
• EPO Patent Index 2024 — Medical technology filing data (15,701 European applications in 2024) used to read CGM patent velocity in relative terms.

Discuss a Similar Matter

Talk to us about a technology scouting study built on the primary patent record for your medical-device decision.

Related PerspireIP work: Technology Scouting service · Technology Forecasting in Medical Devices (case study) · Technology Scouting in Biotechnology (case study).

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