UL Certification: A Launchpad for Product Development Excellence

This article originally appeared in Medcity News on June 14, 2024.

Early in my company’s short history, I almost made a big mistake by passing on getting UL Certification. My team, however, made a compelling case to move forward with what ended up being a core driver of our success to date in attracting new customers and partners. When your business is in its infancy, everything is a learning experience — even those close calls. Getting UL Certified was one of the smartest decisions we could have made for our business, for our customers, and for the medical device industry. Now let’s talk about why I hesitated and some key learnings for companies in the same position.

Certifications Are Achievable for Small Companies

There’s a common misconception that certifications are only for big companies. Having worked for several companies in safety-critical sectors, I am aware of the value of certifications. I just wasn’t sure it was the right time for us to pursue UL certification. Our team was laser-focused on innovation and time to market. Why slow down with a process that is known for being costly, long, and time-consuming at a minimum? I also questioned whether our customers really cared about UL certifications or if it was more of an industry checkbox.

What ultimately changed my mind? Dogfooding. Yes, you heard that right. We’re big believers in the value of dogfooding — using our own products internally. Our dogfooding efforts focus on replicating our customers’ regulatory environments to better understand their challenges while improving our offerings in the process.

There are multiple benefits of using your own products in-house. It improves product quality, testing, and frequency of new releases. Not only can companies better empathize with its customers and tailor new features to their needs, but they can also deliver a better-quality product. Using your own products daily makes it much easier to proactively identify and mitigate bugs. We’ve found that we can also deliver new innovations faster because we don’t need to wait for feedback from our customers since we’re already experiencing the same challenges ourselves.

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