Lifestyle Integration for Medical Devices

The following is excerpted from a new article we’ve just published at MedTech Intelligence titled Lifestyle Integration for Medical Devices.

The article is the second in a series by Randy Horton, Bernhard Kappe, and Adrian Pittman about patient engagement connected medical devices, and the emergence of medical-grade lifestyle devices.

The following is an excerpt from this article:

Devices by themselves don’t improve outcomes. Better lifestyle integration is key to driving changes in patient compliance—embedding sensors into the sorts of devices people can use every day to increase opportunities for passive biometric capture and to facilitate therapeutics.

The first installment of the series was an exploration of the dimensions necessary to build a new class of devices – medical-grade lifestyle devices – that blend the best-of-breed capabilities of both medical and consumer-grade manufacturers. When combined with virtual care, the devices benefit providers, their patients, and improve the quality of care.

However, providing better-designed medical devices is only part of the industry challenge; it’s also important to address the elephant in the room: adherence. After all, even the best medical-grade sensors and therapeutic delivery mechanisms in the world are useless if the devices they are embedded in are not used consistently and properly. At the conclusion of the previous article, five device program attributes were identified that must be met to improve adherence potential, namely:

• • Self-fitting
  • Passive
  • Effective
  • Durable
  • Natural

This installment will further examine several user experience (UX) best practices from the consumer product industry and dive deeper into the must-haves to impel lifestyle integration for any device program.

You can read the full second article at MedTech Intelligence.