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The world is better when healthcare meets people where they are.

Download our white paper to explore ten best practices&nbsp;for designing effective healthcare solutions for the home environment:

Download: Designing Home Healthcare

We've been developing medical devices to meet rigorous standards for 55 years.

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We are now well into a shift in healthcare from clinical settings to home environments. The U.S. home healthcare market, worth&nbsp;<a href="https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/home-healthcare-industry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$142.3 billion</a>&nbsp;in 2023, is&nbsp;expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of <a href="https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/home-healthcare-industry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">7.5%</a> from 2024 to 2030.
This evolution has been a net positive for healthcare consumers in many ways. Being able to receive high quality care at home, with fewer hospital visits, is undeniably convenient. It supports better management of chronic conditions. It reduces healthcare costs.

However, for creators of medical devices and healthcare solutions, designing healthcare for the home environment can be a thorny challenge. (So challenging that<a href="https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/home-health-and-consumer-devices/home-health-care-hub" target="_blank"> the FDA recently launched a new initiative</a> to address it.)
<ul><li>You are no longer designing for trained healthcare professionals, but for lay users.</li></ul>
<ul><li>You are no longer designing for highly controlled clinical settings, but for varied and unpredictable home environments.</li></ul>
Our own medtech clients are often surprised at just how much more variability they encounter and must now design for. All the muscle memory they built when it comes to designing for highly trained and educated users, and designing for normed, well-controlled clinical environments, no longer applies.
As the home continues to evolve into a central hub of healthcare, how can you design for it in a way that delivers safe and effective healthcare for all?

2024 06 10 Designing for Home Healthcare INLINE1

In our own experience designing physical and digital healthcare solutions for the home, we've learned that addressing the unique challenges and opportunities of the home environment requires a blend of innovative thinking, user-centered design, and a deep understanding of the end user's environment. 
In this article, we'll share our experiences, lessons, and insights from real-world projects, highlighting best practices that can help medtech and healthcare companies create effective and accessible home healthcare solutions.

Below are ten best practices to apply when designing healthcare products for home use. These best practices will help ensure your products are user-friendly, safe, reliable, and effective, ultimately improving patient outcomes and satisfaction.

<h3>1. Bring home users directly into the design process.</h3>
No one understands your users’ needs better than users themselves. Instead of relying just on passive user personas, bring real users into your design process to get unfiltered, instantaneous feedback on your design concepts’ viability. Real users will challenge your assumptions, critique your ideas, and cheer when a concept resonates and solves a need. Co-creation often occurs in the form of a moderated co-workshop that brings together designers, users, and client stakeholders. To learn more about co-creation and how to conduct it successfully, read our article, <a href="https://www.delve.com/insights/the-why-how-and-when-of-co-creation-during-the-product-development-process" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Why, How, and When of Co-Creation During the Product Development Process.</a>

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<h3>Example:&nbsp;Safety Syringes for Home Use</h3>

Medical Alley Webinar safety syringe collage

We often conduct co-creation workshops with users who self-inject drugs at home. For this project, our medtech client had developed a line of safety syringes, originally for use in the hospital setting. Meanwhile, an increase in chronic diseases was requiring regular injections of biologic drugs at home. This meant bigger molecules, more viscosity in the drugs, and harder pressure to inject the drugs. Our client wanted to know whether the existing syringe design would be able to deliver the required standard of care when operated by lay users in the home environment. If not, how would the design need to be adapted?
Co-creation enabled us to observe users with various limitations using our safety syringe prototypes. We observed users closely for hours to see how they managed throughout the injection cycle. We saw them struggle to use the syringes, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, in the bottom right of the image above, you can see how one user with extremely long fingernails struggled to operate a syringe. For us, this drove home the fact that designing for the home is very different from designing for the clinical setting. (Have you thought about adding “ability to operate the device with long fingernails" into your product specifications?) 
Co-creation workshops are powerful because they take users from being mere subjects of study to being active participants in the design process. During our safety syringe project, users shared honest feedback about our design concepts, enabling us to build on the insights right then and there. Working directly with users gave us immediate inspiration for dozens of new ideas.

<h3>2.&nbsp;Conduct continual contextual inquiry research with your users.</h3>
Knowledge of the home environment can only be acquired over time. To gain a deep understanding of the context of use, include contextual inquiry research in as many projects as possible. Observe and interview home users as they perform their regular, everyday tasks. Remember, your environment of use will always be specific to your user types, and that these users will be constantly evolving. Stay on top of changes to keep your understanding up to date.

<h3>Example: Freedom Scientific Low Vision Solutions</h3>

2024 06 10 Designing for Home Healthcare INLINE2

Freedom Scientific’s legacy product, the original TOPAZ video magnifier, helped users with low vision by facilitating reading. But the company knew there was potential to do even better. When we started working with Freedom Scientific, we knew we needed to understand their users’ needs as deeply as possible. So, we traveled frequently to Florida, the company’s home base, to conduct in-home contextual research. We studied different types of users, from heavy book readers to those who use a magnifier less frequently, for tasks like reading labels and looking up phone numbers. Observing users in their home context enabled us to understand the nuances of their daily challenges and the strengths and weaknesses of the legacy product. It helped us uncover opportunities to improve workflow, design more intuitive controls for increased ease of use, and add new features to solve common frustrations. For example, we observed many users leaning in too closely to read the device’s screen, sustaining ergonomically risky postures. This led us to improve screen adjustability, including moving the monitor closer so the user can read while still enabling full extension of their hands and arms beneath the desk.
Contextual inquiry research also helped us identify mobile users—business travelers and students—whose needs were going unmet. To meet this opportunity, Delve helped Freedom Scientific develop the Topaz Portable PHD. The new device is a lightweight magnifier that sets up easily in less than a minute and folds away just as easily, like a laptop. <a href="https://www.delve.com/work/freedom-scientific-low-vision-solutions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about our work with Freedom Scientific’s Low Vision Solutions</a>.

<h3>3. Adopt a Universal Design approach to development.</h3>
Most home users are not trained healthcare professionals. They have little or no experience operating medical devices. Their physical and cognitive abilities will vary. They may have visual, hearing, literacy, or language limitations. Designing for the lowest common denominator may not be practical. Instead, apply the principle of Universal Design. Consider the wide variety of abilities that your users might have, then decide what is practical to design for. To ensure your design is accessible to as many users as possible, including those with disabilities, consider including features like voice commands, large buttons, clear icons, and minimalist, intuitive interfaces. Provide easy-to-follow visual user guides. When you design for users that are less able, you will design a product that will be generally more usable for the entire population. When you rethink product requirements for home use, you are likelier to design for maximum adoption. Aim for a design that is so intuitive, the lay user could probably operate it without relying on the instructions for use at all. The home user should be able to figure out how to use it just by looking at it.

<h3>Example: OXO Good Grips Potato Peeler</h3>

Oxo y good grips vegetable peeler small 76934 36de94e s543x531 cropped_16x9

This was not a Delve project, but we love telling the story of OXO Good Grips because it’s such a clear illustration of the effectiveness of Universal Design. Many years ago, the founder of OXO Good Grips decided to design a potato peeler that would be easier for his wife to use, because she suffered from severe arthritis. 

The resulting product was more usable for everyone. The OXO brand is successful today largely because their products are designed based on the principle of Universal Design, making them easy for most of the population to use and enjoy. Think about the edge cases and use this understanding to define your target design.

<h3>4. Design transparency into product interfaces.</h3>
You are no longer designing for healthcare professionals, but for lay users, some of whom will feel skeptical by default towards new medical technology or new healthcare treatments. Some users, especially those in historically underserved communities, may have had previous healthcare experiences that have caused them to feel generally distrustful or hostile towards healthcare providers or healthcare organizations. Respect these concerns. To overcome user ambivalence or distrust, design product interfaces for transparency. Anticipate users’ questions at every step. Design interfaces to provide the answers and reassurance users need to feel comfortable, safe, and confident using your product.

<h3>Example: EO Care Digital Platform for Cannabis Care</h3>

Slide 1 eo care hybrid intro

While cannabis has shown great promise in helping to manage chronic pain, sleeplessness and anxiety, those who are seeking relief generally lack access to the kind of close, ongoing clinical partnership necessary to define and maintain an optimal cannabis care regimen. EO Care is a telehealth platform designed to fill this void and bring responsible, affordable cannabis care and products to all who might benefit. We worked with EO Care to design a new EO Care app experience that would help users better manage their day-to-day treatment while providing EO Care’s team of physicians better visibility into users’ dosing and response. 

We were keenly aware that when pioneering a new type of care, especially with a substance that is only recently legalized, it would be crucial that the entire EO Care experience build trust and confidence. The patent-pending daypart feedback experience we designed provided the data and ability for EO Care’s team of physicians to respond in near-real time, creating a better, more personalized care experience at every point in the EO Care experience. 
 
<a href="https://www.delve.com/work/digital-health-platform-for-cannabis-care-2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about our work on the EO Care Cannabis Care platform.</a>

<h3>5. Hide complexity from the user.</h3>
To make your device as user-friendly as possible, apply the principle of Simplexity. Simplexity means building complexity into the device itself, to reduce the number of steps the user must take to operate it. Building more complexity and sophistication into your device to make it more usable may make it more challenging and costly to produce, but the result will be worth it.

<h3>Example: Dexcom G6 Continuous Glucose Monitoring System</h3>

Dexcom in use cropped touch up

The Dexcom G6 Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) System is based on a tiny, flexible sensor that's about the width of a human hair, placed just under the skin. 

Previous generations of the system required using a manual sensor applicator that resembled a large, plastic syringe. The user needed to push a plunger to drive a needle into the skin to insert the sensor and then pull up on a collar to pull the needle back out. The process was painful, intimidating, and error prone for many users, particularly for parents using the system with young children. 

Applying the principle of Simplexity, we designed the Dexcom G6 applicator to have one-touch, one-hand operation and minimize any sensation or anticipation of pain. Whereas the earlier-generation device required eleven steps from the end user perspective, the G6 applicator we designed requires only four. We eliminated seven steps from the application process by integrating those steps into the device itself. 

Achieving this result required a great deal of engineering work—work that is entirely invisible to the user. That’s the goal: an extremely intuitive device that users can operate immediately and effortlessly, right out of the box. <a href="https://www.delve.com/work/cgm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about our work on the Dexcom G6.</a>

<h3>6. Integrate human factors into your design team.</h3>
As medtech companies navigate the shift from designing for the clinical setting to designing for the home, guidance from human factors experts will be invaluable.&nbsp;

2024 05 03 underutilized role human factors HERO2 2

Explore the benefits of integrated human factors

Instead of being brought in to consult at the end of a project, human factors should direct development with key input at every stage of development, and not just through user studies.

To utilize HF to its full potential, integrate it into the front end of the development process, during contextual inquiry research. A trained HF practitioner, observing the user in the device’s actual use environment, will be able to pick up on important details of which the user is unaware. They will be able to draw out the back stories during user interviews, often uncovering important insights.
This early immersion in the life and world of the user equips the human factors practitioner with a deep, nuanced understanding of the user environment and what the user wants and needs. HF can then leverage this foundational empathy and knowledge to represent the end user throughout the entire design process—and help set you on the path to designing the right product. Nothing can fully replace direct user feedback, so eventually, you should bring users back into the development process. Until then, HF can serve as the voice of the user within the design team itself. <a href="https://www.delve.com/insights/a-chronically-underutilized-role-in-new-medical-device-development" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about integrating HF into your design process.</a>

<h3>7. Embrace empathic design.&nbsp;</h3>
Empathic design means meeting users where they are and designing accordingly. You may discover that some home users’ cognitive ability or level of education is much lower than you assumed. You may discover that users’ perceptions of the problem are very different from your own. Or you may learn that their highest priority is one you did not expect. Putting users at the center of your design process means supporting their health journey, starting from wherever they are today. 
Learn more about <a href="https://www.delve.com/insights/why-is-empathy-essential-for-design" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">why empathy is essential for design</a>, including how empathy can reveal opportunities for new product applications.

OPT intro

In order to better serve the needs of people with Type 2 diabetes, BD set out to create a central, digital hub for people to manage all aspects of their care – from tracking personal health data to the behavioral, educational and emotional support intended to help them make healthy life choices. 
Through a multi-year relationship that included qualitative research with people managing type 2 diabetes, clinicians and pharmacists, multiple rounds of concepting and user testing, global collection of user feedback and optimization, our collective teams designed a new, goal-oriented experience that met people where they were in their treatment. 
The BD Diabetes Care mobile application, designed and built in collaboration with the company’s own in-house team of strategists, designers and developers, delivers a custom coaching experience for people dealing with a diagnosis that lasts a lifetime. From helping people understand their diagnosis and start taking their first steps in managing it, to helping those who have fallen off track a long time after their initial diagnosis, the app was designed to help empower people and their healthcare providers to achieve and maintain a more healthy lifestyle while dealing with one of the most common chronic diseases in the world. 
<a href="https://www.delve.com/work/digital-hub-to-manage-type-2-diabetes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about our work on the BD Diabetes Care app.</a>

2024 06 10 Designing for Home Healthcare HERO 3

The world is better when healthcare meets people where they are. As the home evolves into a central hub of healthcare, how can we design for it in a way that delivers safe and effective healthcare for all?

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The world is better when healthcare meets people where they are. As the home evolves into a central hub of healthcare, how can we design for it in a way that delivers safe and effective healthcare for all?

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Designing Home Healthcare: Ten Best Practices and Real-World Examples

Designing Home Healthcare: Ten Best Practices and Real-World Examples

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