Design Challenges for Connected Medical Devices
A new breed of connected IoT medical devices that make personal healthcare easy and reliable come hand-in-hand with design challenges IoT product manufacturers will need to overcome.
IoT in Healthcare – Connected Medical Products
The internet of things has numerous applications in healthcare, from remote monitoring to smart sensors and medical device integration. It has the potential to not only keep patients safe and healthy but to improve how physicians deliver care as well. Healthcare IoT can also boost patient engagement and satisfaction by allowing patients to spend more time interacting with their doctors.
But healthcare IoT isn’t without its obstacles.
The number of connected devices and the tremendous amount of data they collect can be a challenge for hospital IT to manage. There is also the question of how to keep all of that data secure, especially if it is being exchanged with other devices.
[CASE STUDY] Design Challenges for Connected Medical Products
IPS was approached by AdhereTech to help design and develop a second-generation “smart” pill bottle that would remind patients to take their medication. The AdhereTech IoT pill bottle, now successfully being used by thousands of patients, presented many design challenges. The lessons we learned from this initial undertaking can help guide others with similar projects for connected medical devices.
We were contracted to provide a full range of design services for the new product from prototype through manufacturing, including mechanical, electrical, and industrial design. The company wanted to take a major step forward from its first-generation pill bottle to the second generation. The pill bottle needed to see some big changes – primarily to make it more attractive, user-friendly, and manufacturable.
The company’s strategic vision for the new pill bottle was to increase adherence and reduce the costs associated with missed or haphazard dosage. We started by designing the product to connect to a cloud service wirelessly, collecting regular usage data, and ensuring that patients are taking pills when they are supposed to.
The newly designed AdhereTech smart pill bottle is now Internet-connected and can alert patients when it’s time to take their medicine, either through a call or text or via a blinking light enclosed within the base of the bottle. It also has a wireless CDMA chip that sends a small amount of data, measuring when the bottle was opened and how many pills were taken.
Our product design expertise −, in particular, our background and experience designing wireless products − helped us to create the right balance and approach. We viewed the project as essentially a pill bottle with the insides of a cell phone. We were tasked with meeting the fundamental design goals − to build the product to work globally and be manufactured at scale − while also tackling the usability design goals to improve the look and feel of the device, greatly extend the battery life and ensure day-to-day durability. Regulatory compliance was of paramount importance.
Challenges Designing AdhereTech’s Smart Pill Bottle Included:
Battery Life
As part of the design process, we worked to create a power-efficient design with more than six months of battery life. This challenge was critical for the new pill bottle and we had to make sure it exceeded the patient’s prescription duration without requiring battery recharging. The first-generation bottles only held a charge of about 45 days. So the pharmacists would have to swap them out for a newly charged bottle every month when the patient picked up refills.
Ease of Use
Since we knew many seniors would be using the new pill bottle, a key design goal for us was ease of use. The challenge was to design a patient-friendly bottle that was actually packed with dense electronics. To make sure it would be simple and worry-free to use, we designed it so that it doesn’t require the patient to connect to the Internet, plug it in to charge it, or download any software – all of that is done automatically.
Regulatory Testing and Requirements
In addition to the smart pill bottle product design, we were responsible for facilitating the preliminary regulatory reviews and shepherded the design through FCC regulatory testing. This step is another important part of any IoT product design effort. Regulatory requirements and required certifications must be factored into the design. Because they are connected, IoT products must be tested for radiated emissions and susceptibility. Additionally, cellular carrier testing must be performed.
In the end, the use of IoT design principles helped the new AdhereTech smart pill bottle become a big success. Currently used by many top pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, these innovative smart pill bottles have been shown to improve medication adherence by an average of 20%.
