Health care is an important, huge, and growing piece of our economy. But as a reader named Beth Wieder points out, the design of medical devices isn’t always as user-friendly (or, I would add, as cost-efficient or as practical) as one might like.
For instance, we blogged some time back about a very cheap and portable asthma spacer.
Here is Beth’s note in which she passes along one journalist’s good and compelling idea for improving the design of medical devices. Once you finish reading it, you will probably start thinking of all sorts of things that you’d like to put Steve Jobs to work on:
San Francisco-based journalist Amy Tenderich, who has Type 1 diabetes, runs the Diabetes Mine blog, featuring facts, gadgets, reviews, and opinions on all things diabetes. She started getting wider attention last year with her open letter to Steve Jobs calling for better product design for medical devices.
Most diabetics have several medical devices — pumps, syringes, lancing devices, etc. — with them 24 hours a day, and while we are grateful for these life-saving gadgets, most have considerable room for improvement from a user point of view. This year, she’s opened up the contest up to anyone.
I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when you open up a very limited field (industrial designers working for medical device companies) to anyone with a computer and an idea. Any thoughts?
In related news, here’s an article from The Economist about a research project at Berkeley called CellScope that turns the digital camera on cellphones into a microscope,
which means that with the correct stain it can be used to identify the parasite that causes malaria. Moreover, by transmitting an image directly over the mobile network, the CellScope could greatly help with the remote diagnosis and monitoring of many illnesses.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
As mentioned, the entry cost for medical devices is very high, the liability costs are high, and the certification process in the US is, to be very charitable, cautious. By and large, some of these barriers are lower elsewhere, and that’s where the action is. Not the least of the domestic problems is the fact that we’ve abandoned both manufacturing and engineering, so it is that much less likely that a good idea can get developed. Even a great new idea needs an available, and skilled team. The ratio right now in engineering graduates, China plus India vs the US, is around 100:1. Done!
Anybody who had to use blood sugar meters even just a few years back must admit that the current generation represents a vast improvement allowing most patients to take control of their condition.
My wish is a similar portable device that can measure blood coagulation – cheaply! These devices exist but are not exactly portable and definitely not cheap. Yet patients on anticoagulants have been shown to achieve better control of their blood clotting if they use these devices at home and adjust the doses themselves that if they have hospital based blood tests and the dose is adjusted by their doctor.
Due to a recent head injury, I lost most of my hearing. I’ve had three hearing tests (Beltone, MiracleEar and a small private firm), all three recommended hearing aids that cost of $3,500.00 apiece.
I look at those aids, the size of a baby carrot, and think “Even Steve Jobs doesn’t charge that much for the iPhone that has countless functions!”
I’m 47 and wonder how the hearing impaired, many who are seniors and fixed incomes, can cough up $7,000.00 to hear better.
These companies advertise their compassion for the hearing-impaired and want to help out of the kindness of their heart . . . if they are paid enough. It seems to me those devices could be profitably sold for a few hundred, instead of a few thousand.
My insurance company (Humana) wouldn’t cover a cent of the cost – so I remain without.
A hat-tip to The Lions Club for providing affordable, sometimes free, hearing aids/eyeglasses and testing to those who can’t afford it otherwise. The next time you see them at the intersection, throw a buck in the bucket and enjoy the “Life Savers”.
you can also use the cellphone to swat the mosquito
Why are they calling on Steve Jobs? Not that i don’t have faith in his abilities cause i do, but isn’t he a boomer like grey, and ready to take over. I don’t know, is he squeaky? Where are all the young people? The Mark Zuckerberg types? Shouldn’t they want just as much to create new devices to help out their ailing and aging boomer parents? Is there money to be made in these things? Or all the young people with a entrepreneurial and altruistic soul busy solving other things?
so great! i like iphone!!!
#11 you can hack an Iphone to be a hearing aid since it just needs to be have a microphone, amplification, and speaker. So after everyone goes deaf from listening to headphones too long, that may be the next Iapplication.
I think good design is when every function has it’s own button instead of trying to double up
(like trying to set the time on a VCR Menu fastforward to change the hour what is that about) I have to use BGM and stick test strip in then change code with the button that goes though history is not intuitive but then you likely end up with a knobby ugly device. I do like the cartrige BGMs better at least you are less likely to get blood on stuff.
Medical devices choose not to undergo constant redesign because this costs them tons of money in licences and permits and approvals and super long waiting + red tape and burocracy…
I say they “choose not to” becuase they COULD but they dont..
I simply dont understand their BODs which dont seem to see two great benefits:
Easy to use = more sales
If the sole moral incentive of making it easier for the user is not enough they should at the very least look at the astronomical sales improvement they would experience…
as a VP of sales of any of these companies, this would be my priority..
I dont have tons of experience in the medical device industry, but if someone thinks I am totally wrong, I would appreciate some comments…