Patients Reap Medical Benefits as New Tech Develops

As industrial design technology marches forward, newer, faster ways are found to serve and heal the afflicted. But we aren’t necessarily talking about breakthrough cure-alls or miracle pills just yet. The most anticipated recent arrivals on the medical scene are innovations on existing technology.

For example, smart phones got a little bit smarter in 2013 with the rollout of a sizeable selection of medical apps. With them, patients can expedite, plan and track their own recoveries with much of the same precision found in a hospital. The perk of this development comes through the intrinsic convenience of mobile devices: tools that have graduated so far from their original definition that the word “telephone” now seems cute in comparison.

With the 40,000 medical apps now on the market, doing everything from enumerating calories to communicating wirelessly to devices inside the body are options literally at the patient’s fingertips. One of the most publicized medical apps is OnTrack Diabetes, a revolutionary and free application that allows diabetics to manage various data, including glucose levels, food intake, medication, blood pressure and weight, with unprecedented ease.

With better electronic record keeping, Big Data Services are also set to be a highly efficacious resource for medical companies. James S. Varelis, principal at PwC pharmaceuticals and life sciences, explains: “[Patients] are benefiting from the increasing focus on consumers from all stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem, new relationships and business models that are forming across the heath space, and the emphasis on improved health outcomes and quality.”

This equates to improved communication and benchmarking from the top to the bottom of the medical industry with emphasis on improving the patient experience. “When we have medical device companies like pacemaker manufacturers extending their reach beyond just the device to include monitoring and patient outreach, the end result is better customer satisfaction and better patient outcomes,” says Varelis. “That’s a win-win all around.”

For more information on medical device design and manufacturing, contact Pivot International at 1-877-206-5001.

The New Kind of Teamwork: Integration in Design

The businesses of today, in terms of role structure, are flatter than pancakes.

Hierarchical authority and a “that’s not my job” mindset hold little water in contemporary workplaces. The products and services now being welcomed into the marketplace are driven by product development teams that function as a single, holistic brain.

Gone are the days of Henry Ford’s assembly line, wherein each worker only knew how to build, repair or attach a single widget. This old-school sort of fractured working and thinking, though efficient at first glance, will never yield a perfect product. Rather, it disjoints each member of the team and makes for a motley, mismatched patchwork of miscommunicated ideas and missed opportunities. When team members don’t come together as an orderly, democratic body, the enterprise can’t help but come off as a little haphazard.

Try having 10 different people write 10 different chapters of the same book. No matter how much advice and direction you give each one before they sit down to write, the final products won’t dovetail. It won’t feel organic. The seams will show. In a word, it will just feel wrong.

Everyone has their unique accent and flavor so strongly tied to the way they problem-solve that individual voices inevitably shine through. Businesses who realize this and institutionalize an inclusive, integrative approach that values each member are better off for it.

The act of being integrative runs from that first, nebulous meetings about design, function and goal all the way through prototyping and mass production. For example, an engineer could be charged with designing a PCB to fit into a unit’s enclosure. In theory, she wouldn’t have to understand anything about the rest of the product’s requirements. Our engineer merely goes about one, modestly limited task, ignoring all other aspects.

Now imagine this engineer is not only part of the PCB design, but the entire unit at large. Her job, and therefore her influence, expands as she is given the freedom to discuss the unit’s capability and limitations at length with her team. Our engineer might catch a problem that affects the PCB, say a fickle antenna or awkward user interface, that would otherwise cause headache down the road.

By nature, the movement toward being integrative calls for a sturdier knowledge base for all those involved. For a singular team to propel a project from start to end, its members need to have a deep, cumulative understanding of all the factors and fields surrounding the product. The personnel with the technical expertise and “big ideas” also need to be able to function in a social, reactive atmosphere.

The natural evolution of such a work climate is more “full-service” development companies. Such entities are chock full of experts in specific fields with workable, growing capability in a galaxy of related subjects.

Being a jack-of-all-trades is coming back into style, but not in the way you probably thought. The new trend positions the pantological business expert of the future as a visionary devil’s advocate, not an assembly line drone.

At Pivot International, we have long held the distinction of being a fully integrated product design, development, and manufacturing firm. Our global, company-owned support operations provide our clients with the benefits of working with a domestic organization and the financial advantages of international tooling, procurement & manufacturing. Contact us today for a free consultation.

A Bumpy Ride for Medtech

The tightfisted, traditionally blue chip industry of medical technology was beset on all sides by daunting hurdles this past year. First, there were the mounting pressures of consumerization and globalization. More people in more places needed treatment, and it’s harder than ever to get it to everyone soundly and quickly. Next there was mHealth, the burgeoning movement that incorporates smart phones as conduits for health service, documentation and information (it was only a matter of time, anyway). But these are just the tip of the iceberg. A dark cloud of uncertainty looms, and more than ever, the name of the game is adapt or die.

In the United States, companies also wrestled with Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), the new medical standard that seeks to minimize health care costs by emphasizing outcome-based care. The medical device manufacturing industry especially felt cornered as new taxes and rules sprang up. Death knells for electronic device production plants around the country rang incessantly, even for the nation’s most prominent companies. Even more troublingly, the longitudinal impacts of the new taxes have yet to be seen. Their suffocating grasp on research and development budgets will only start to surface in the coming years.

Newcomers into the medical device production scene further shifted the sands of the landscape. Tech giants Samsung and Verizon geared up to snatch a piece of the pie as they venture into the realms of mHealth, big data and health IT, designing sleek patient-side apps that are making established companies start to sweat.

“Medtech companies need to embrace innovation techniques we call ‘fast, frequent, frugal failure,’ while also making sure they protect their core business,” says James S. Varelis, principal at PwC pharmaceuticals and life sciences. “That’s a tricky balancing act, one that requires an ambidextrous approach to driving the business.”

But the year wasn’t all trials and tribulations for the industry. Many individual markets, such as those behind knee, hip, spine and cardioverter-defibulators (devices that detect and warn of life-threatening cardiac irregularities) saw unexpected surges in sales. Further, cutting-edge advances in 3D printing also wowed the public and medical officials alike as a new era of manufacturing grows into its toddler stages. Other breakthrough devices include Medtronic’s first-generation artificial pancreas and Abbott’s MitraClip, a device that improves blood flow through the heart. Both were greenlit by the FDA.

The last 12 months were anything but predictable for medtech. While many obstacles await on what will prove to be an inevitable technological, political and legal rollercoaster, opportunity is abound for companies willing to try new things and explore new options. As Benjamin Franklin so famously said, “nothing in this world can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Thanks to constant revolution and innovation of medtech, we can at least defer one of these nuisances.