Creating a Defensible Medical Device Competitive Comparison
Use committee criteria and approved specifications when a procurement analyst requests a comparison table.
A comparison table should make a technical committee’s decision easier to verify. Limit it to approved specifications and claims that the team can substantiate about another system. Start with the customer’s criteria and the exact competitor model before choosing a format.
Ask which specifications, workflow requirements, service considerations, and site constraints the committee will use. Request the competitor model, cited source, and any procurement rules for comparisons. Provide approved specifications for your product and label the source for each statement. If a requested claim cannot be supported by a permitted source, leave it out and explain what documentation the committee can review instead.
Picture a procurement analyst saying, “Where does the other system fail?” Answer: “I can help produce a comparison against your documented criteria. Could you send the exact model and the technical committee’s evaluation questions? I will provide approved specifications and sources for our system. I will not characterize the other product without a verifiable source, but we can show where each criterion needs committee validation.”
This approach gives procurement a usable document without asking them to trust sales language. It also makes the eventual decision traceable: every row has a criterion, a source, and an owner who can validate the finding.
Practice by taking one comparison table and removing unsupported adjectives. Replace each with a specific specification, source reference, or open validation question. Have a peer challenge any sentence that cannot be verified.
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