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Coming to a Home Near You: Consumerized Medical Device Design

Scott Smith, Changeist

If you happen to go for an ultrasound scan in the near future, you might be forgiven for thinking the device next to you in your physician’s office is a hot-off-the-production line netbook or portable DVD player, but in fact it’s likely to be an actual ultrasound unit. Beginning in 2009 and continuing well into the new year is a significant shift in the design aesthetic applied to devices in the consumer medical market, with a distinct shift toward form factors and cues taken from the consumer electronics market. From thinness to curved lines to simplified interfaces and inputs, to wireless connectivity, devices such as the aforementioned ultrasound, as well as portable patient monitors and remote monitors, are beginning to have more in common with an iPhone than the older generation of bulky, mostly stationary machines.

Several factors are driving this shift. At the user end, a wider range of medical personnel are administering these devices, requiring advances in interface design to make them accessible and manageable by non-experts. Some device designers are recognizing that the upcoming generation of medical technicians spends more time than predecessors managing consumer electronic interfaces, and this convergence of interaction styles makes sense. Likewise, simpler interfaces, including touch screens, provide less risk of holding dangerous bacteria and can be cleaned more easily. Also, with the push of clinical-grade medical technology into areas such as home care and retail treatment environments, these devices will have to blend better into these new surroundings.

At the other end of the supply chain, device designers and manufacturers are also seeing the value of leveraging common technology platforms between consumer electronics and consumer medical device, including shifting from specialized connectors for various attachments, imaging and storage units to the USB standard common in laptops, PCs and other home gadgets. They are also able to better leverage knowledge around wireless technologies in both markets, pushing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and new short-range wireless technologies such as Zigbee into their blueprints. These moves are enabling a faster transition to the next generation of mobile medical technologies—and the goal of a wireless medical environment that many hospitals and physicians aspire to.

With companies such as Intel and Microsoft aiming to play in this next generation of medical technologies, this trends toward consumerization of medical design isn’t likely to slow—already we are seeing products on the medical market that would fit in both aesthetically and technologically in a living room. We see this trend as an important disruption in the trajectory of medical device design, and therefore a significant opportunity for emerging as well as established players to innovate as health care itself experiences disruptions and fragmentation in the consumer space.

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Scott Smith is founder and principal at Changeist, a foresight and innovation firm that monitors trends in markets such as consumer electronics, health care and transportation. He is also the author of an upcoming study of innovation hotspots in consumer medical design.

Tags: Bluetooth, consumer electronics market, consumer medical market, consumerized medical device design, Intel, iPhone, medical device design, medical interface design, medical technicians, medical technologies, medical technology, Microsoft, patient monitor, patient monitors, portable patient monitor, portable patient monitors, remote monitor, remote monitors, simplified interface, simplified interfaces, stationary medical machine, stationary medical machines, ultrasound scan, ultrasound unit, Wi-Fi, wireless connectivity, Zigbee