Considerations for Designing Home Health Devices

“Home healthcare is all about the patient experience,” said Doug Hamilton, global healthcare segment leader at Covestro, told MD+DI. He noted that people generally have a better experience when they can be treated in their homes. And for some patients in remote areas far away from the nearest hospital or clinic, home-use devices can even be lifesaving. However, these products, while meant to achieve similar results as their hospital-use counterparts, are not used in quite the same manner when in the home, and manufacturers should be aware of the differences in how their devices will be used early in the design stage. And a lot of device makers already are doing this. “On the manufacturing and OEM level, they’re thinking to themselves, ‘we’re already making these healthcare devices, and what we need to do is to transition them to a home healthcare environment,’” said John Skabardonis, PhD, strategic marketing communications--healthcare & design outreach at Covestro. And it’s exactly that transition that is the challenge. The team at Covestro mentioned several factors that manufacturers should keep in mind when designing these home-use products. First, they should be rugged, and able to withstand errors by users. “The overall equipment being used has to be made robust for people who ar...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Materials Source Type: news