Whether the global ‘smart home healthcare’ market actually totals $30bn by 2023, as a Research and Markets study trumpets, is debatable, but one thing that this Editor agrees with is that successful home health devices need to take a chapter from Steve Jobs’ Apple and famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s playbooks (search our Loewy references here) and design for how the consumer lives and would use their product. It isn’t flashy design awards, but how that technology can not only fit into a person’s life but also be an asset that they’d miss if someone took it away–a point often forgotten in the rush of initial design, testing, and funding.

Writer Scott Thielman of Product Creation Studio, a Seattle-based industrial design and engineering firm, outlines four health tech products/services that represent technology that is intuitive, easy-to-use, accessible, and, I would add, have a little something extra that makes them indispensable.

• Athelas, a next-generation immune monitoring device that resembles an Amazon Alexa in being a 3D black cylinder. Instead of playing music, it measures neutrophils, lymphocytes, platelets, white blood cells, morphology, and cell activation all within minutes from a test strip inserted in the cylinder. (Investigational device awaiting FDA review)
• Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)’s smart toilet seat (which Editor Charles punningly referred to here) was tested with heart failure patients. It measured nine clinically relevant features, including weight, single-lead ECG, systolic/diastolic blood pressure, blood oxygenation and localized pulse timing, and a ballistocardiogram (BCG) for measuring the mechanical forces associated with the cardiac cycle. Normally, the patient would have to use several devices for these measurements rather than taking a seat. Speaking of the seat, it is standard white and replaces the one in the bathroom. Results were published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth.
• ResMed’s connection of its continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) sleep apnea treatment devices to the cloud before the patient uses them, plus their patient smartphone app helps them to claim that 84 percent of new users reach the necessary usage threshold for Medicare adherence in the first 90 days of treatment.
• Clarify Medical’s build-in of user feedback for its home vitiligo and psoriasis treatment that goes direct to their in-house customer service also registers patient usage, needed fixes, and outreach to those who need additional coaching and training.
• Livongo’s acquisition of myStrength’s behavioral health app [TTA 31 Jan] also points to the importance of consumer behavior in a somewhat different aspect–the 20 percent and more who are struggling with behavioral health issues along with one or more chronic conditions managed by Livongo for employers and health plans.

How to design home healthcare devices that people will use (Medical Design & Outsourcing)