Market sizing case: How many blood-pressure monitors in the US?

Question

Hi, I was browsing some of the past market sizing questions and got stuck on this particular one.

Here's what I thought I could do.

1. No. blood-pressure monitor = (Owned by hospitals) + (Owned by households)

2. Owned by hospitals = (No. Hospitals) * 1 (Assume each hospital owns only one blood-pressure monitor)

3. No. Hospitals = (US population * % Getting sick * % Going to the hospital * No. of visits) / (Hospital Capacity)

Question: I guess the "household-owned blood-pressure monitors" part is pretty straightforward, as well as the number of people going to the hospital. Where I got stuck is "Hospital capacity/year + utilization %". Any help on this bit would be much appreciated!

Also, I'm wondering if this approach makes sense and whether there's a better way to calculate this. (Especially curious if there's any solid 'supply-side' approach)

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

Hi, in addition to the solutions proposed by the other coaches in the discussion, I would like to suggest similar cases in the platform to practice with:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-much-would-you-charge-to-clean-all-the-windows-in-seattle-4965
https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/market-sizing-milk-consumption-5087
https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-would-you-calculate-the-value-of-a-cow-4982
https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/estimate-number-of-traffic-lights-in-a-london-5692

Hope it helps,
Antonello

Answer 2

Hi there,

I'd recommend a slightly different approach. The main problem is that you're totally guessing on most numbers here. The entire point of market sizing breakdowns is to break down the problem into sections you can reasonably estimate.

Additionally, when making assumptions, they need to be within the realm of reason - there is a 0% chance that each hostpital only has 1 blood-pressure monitor!

Here's what I would do:

Breakdown US into # of towns/counties, small cities, medium cities, and large cities
Estimate # of hospitals per town/city AND # of clinics
Estimate # of blood-pressure monitors in a given clinic (here you can say there are a handful) and in a given hospital (visualize how many rooms there might be. Safe to say there's around a 50% "blood-pressure monitor occupancy rate" per room
Add these all up

Then, make your life easier by doing some % of this # to estimate how many monitors are owned by individuals and businesses.

Answer 3

I think your approach makes sense, but would change it in two places:

No of Hospitals:
- I'd try to make it more tangible. Guessing number of people that get sick and utilization will be tricky.
- A better way might be to imagine your hometown: Roughly count the number of hospitals and take the population. Then you can scale that number by total population
- If you want to make this more specific, you can assume different hospital densities for urban vs rural areas to add one more level of specificity
No of monitors per hospital
- I struggle to see how every hospital would only have one monitor
- Here you should ask for clarification what that monitor actually is. I assume it's something like a device that more or less every patient in ICU is hooked up to
- Then you can break down the number of ICU beds and assume spare capacity in case one breaks (add e.g. 30%)

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Hello!

Overall it´s good, however, I wouldn´t agree with the assumption that each hospital only has one monitor. Don´t you need at least one per each ICU bed, plus ORs, etc?

That would be one of the ocasions in which you would need to ask and work with the interviewer to understand better what they are referring to.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara