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Insurance companies, healthcare providers, and patients are realizing we can treat many medical issues at home and avoid expensive and often inconvenient visits to the doctor’s office or hospital. As a result, many medical devices are now in the hands of untrained patients and caregivers, creating a growing market of consumer medical (or “medsumer”) products. This medsumer product market is exploding, along with the increased spending on home healthcare. This paper explores the benefits and value of looking at medical product development through the lens of this medsumer trend by applying typically consumer-oriented tools and techniques to the development of medical devices. We recommend specific consumer-driven techniques and tools we have used recently in developing medical products. The techniques include a greater emphasis on up-front user research, technological augmentation to ethnography, interdisciplinary design approach, integrated physical & digital prototyping, and more iterative user feedback. |
