Diabetes & Human Factors
THAY Medical recently exhibited at the Diabetes UK Professional Conference 2016 in Glasgow, Scotland. At the conference we were overwhelmed by the number of medical devices available for diabetes from insulin pumps to insulin pens to glucose monitors and everything else in between.We talked to many diabetes specific clinicians, patients, researchers and academics. There was a strong consensus that device manufactures are genuinely very good at human factors for their medical devices however, there is still room for improvement. This especially is thought to be the case with training, understanding lifestyles of patients and adoption of medical devices at home.There seemed to be a common theme around diabetic devices. That some devices are so focused on the clinical application, which of course is very important, rather than on the adoption of devices to use them in real life. It’s very easy to assume that all patients will easily adopt to their devices without any problems or concerns once at home. This however is often not the case and we heard many stories around this topic. The future is about combining the clinical benefit with the lifestyle of the user. Merging these two elements together should make great medical devices.THAY Medical are an innovative human factors and usability consultancy that can offer an exciting & fresh approach to developing medical devices & pharmaceutical products. By using human factors and design THAY Medical have the ability to design and develop devices for patients to allow them to live and follow a more normal lifestyle. We are able to understand user’s needs to ensure that a medical device easily integrate into a patient’s lifestyle and makes any transition to a device much easier. Therefore, the treatment for example insulin via infusion pump for a diabetic patient is more effective psychologically as a result of the patient feeling comfortable with their device.If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact THAY Medical. We would love to hear from you.The staff at THAY Medical
