Patient Safety Day - R&D Spotlight

This year, the WHO is especially focused on raising patient voices and highlighting the responsibility that everyone in the healthcare industry has to make sure patients are active partners in their care.

We’ve always taken this responsibility seriously. Our innovation process is built around working with healthcare professionals, patients, and other important contributors to gain insights and make sure our devices are user-friendly, reliable, and make a real difference. By understanding our end users, we’re able to design and advance products that make medication administration easier, more comfortable, and more consistent, while also getting patients directly involved in their own care for improved safety.

This deep commitment to meeting user needs is woven throughout Owen Mumford, but it’s perhaps most clearly shown in our Research and Development department. As the heart of the company, our R&D team leads innovation and helps shape the future of healthcare. This is where we create tomorrow’s medical devices, all guided by a user-centered design philosophy. Starting with the user’s perspective is crucial to bringing real innovation and added value to our devices. Researching all our user groups forms the foundation of our device development process. Our skilled Human Factors (HF) Engineering team plays a key role in understanding and advocating for user needs throughout every step of development.

Our HF department brings years of experience and is skilled at guiding device designs to better match user needs. Our main goal is to make sure the final injection device is safe and effective for a wide variety of users, and the HF team works hard to catch and eliminate any gaps. We start setting product requirements early in the concept phase, using HF best practices and insights from hands-on testing and customer research to really understand and shape the user interface.

From this first phase, our product design engineers work alongside our HF team to conceptualize the best possible designs to meet user needs. Our in-house engineers come up with impressive solutions to complex device challenges by using the latest design methods and software, carefully shaping every part of the process for a user-focused result. Once we’ve developed some preliminary design concepts, we move on to prototyping. We’re equipped to handle multiple prototypes by developing our own molding machines and tooling in house. We’ve also created an advanced risk management process that helps us carefully consider any hazards to healthcare providers and patients.

All of these efforts are part of our integrated approach to research and development, all working toward one main goal: designing products that put the patient experience at the center. One device where this philosophy stands out is Aidaptus^®, our two-step, single-use autoinjector. Designed to work with either a 1mL or 2.25mL prefilled syringe, Aidaptus combines innovative, patient-centered design and new technology, with automatic needle shielding to protect against needlestick injuries before, during, and after use, while also helping to reduce needle anxiety.

Some of the device’s key features—designed with the whole patient experience in mind—include a large, clear window so users can easily see the medication for accurate dosage, automatic needle shielding, and both audible and visual alerts so users know exactly when the injection is done. Plus, research and user testing from our HF team showed that all patients could use the device with no unexpected usability issues.

Our rigorous, carefully tuned development process is tightly integrated to ensure that patients using our devices get effective and safe care. As a healthcare industry stakeholder, we know how important it is to design devices with the patient’s experience in mind. We are committed to always listening to the people who use our products, working with patients, and continuing to drive innovation for the future.