“COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital and remote care, and there is still a lot of potential for manufacturers to ride this trend with new solutions,” says Iain Ansell, Consulting Director, Team Consulting. “However, the rules governing how successful a connected device is have not changed. A connected development should be user centric from the outset,” he notes.

Team Consulting is a service provider at the marcus evans Medical Device Manufacturing Summit 2021.

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital and remote care. What does this mean for medical device manufacturers? What is the potential of digital health solutions and digital connectivity?

While connectivity has been a hot topic in the industry for some years now, COVID-19 has done much to accelerate this, including a 25 percent surge in the number of health app downloads. Such a trend towards digital health has offered a timely opportunity for many medical device manufacturers looking to develop connected devices. We saw a great example of this in early 2020 when one of our start-up clients completed their development of an all-in-one hearing device that uses smartphone technology. The original idea behind the connected device was to support the democratization of healthcare, allowing both specialist and non-specialist users to offer patients the full ear clinic closer to their communities. When COVID-19 hit, they saw a massive acceleration in the use of their device, as hospitals were looking for new ways to ease pressure on their services and reach their patients outside of traditional care settings.

Of course, demand was not the only factor at play in the success of this connected device. The client had been concentrating on building a great digital experience from the outset, both embedded in the product and in the associated app, which was key to enabling more traditional users. The product needed to work well in terms of usability, allowing a less experienced or less qualified user to feel confident enough to do the job, compared to the years of traditional medical training that came before.

How can manufacturers ensure a connected device is user centric?

If we look back in time, the first connected devices were largely aimed at collecting data, often with a focus on using this to make improvements to designs or finding ways to sell it for commercial gain. The push towards connectivity started as a commercial and technological concern, however the question should really be, what is in it for the end user? New technologies can demand extra steps and more effort for the end user or stakeholder, so it is important to highlight the benefits of using such a device compared to a simpler alternative. Digital technology offers a variety of ways to support the user, from the onboarding and unboxing experience, right through to actually delivering the therapy. Manufacturers need to make sure they convey these benefits to the user to ensure users opt in.

What are some of the human factors that are often overlooked in the connected world? What impact could they have on product success or failure? 

We can’t ignore the fact that more and more companies are now offering apps to consumers, which can quickly lead to users becoming frustrated with having unnecessary clutter on their phones. Manufacturers need to consider the value of building their own standalone apps, or whether they can build into an existing, widely used platform, such as Apple Health. Creating a new app can also add extra challenges for users, in particular for vulnerable or technically adverse user groups, as it requires them to learn a whole new platform. It is therefore worth considering partnering with another app developer to integrate with something more accessible and known.

What is your outlook on the future of connected devices, connectivity and remote care? Can connected devices replace face-to-face? Or will things return back to how they were before the pandemic?

COVID-19 accelerated a change towards digital and remote care that was already taking place. Remote care is not going away, but it is unlikely that digital will replace face-to-face, especially for certain conditions. If we look at skin cancer for example, there is currently no substitute for a physical doctor being there to examine the patient. Despite this, digital has a lot of potential to support users in a variety of ways, including user onboarding, improving the efficiency of the physical interaction with the device, and helping patients to track their medication. It can also be used to give people immediate feedback and assurance that they are carrying out self-care correctly, as opposed to waiting to see a doctor. Rather than replacing the current system entirely, what we can hope to see is a greater integration of digital care with traditional care. We might begin to see doctors making the images and data they collect for diagnosis accessible to the patients online for example. Such a change would allow the patient to track their own health progress and feel more invested in their treatment. In this way and many more, digital technologies have the potential to make healthcare more efficient and accessible to patients, however it is unlikely to replace seeing a doctor in person entirely.