As the need for at home self-administration and routes for delivery of time-dependent and high-volume drug delivery grows, on-body injectors and connected devices hold great opportunity. SAE Media Group’s inaugural Wearable Injectors and Connected Devices USA Conference, which takes place in Boston September 13–14, 2023, will delve into on-body device design and development, the latest advances in connectivity and digital integration of wearable devices, and opportunities for enhancement of user-interface through human factors case studies. SAE spoke with conference speaker Alexandra Benbadis, Usability Leader at Sanofi, about her insights on this vital market.
The wearable injectors and connected devices market has grown rapidly over the past few years. What key differences have you noticed in the last year regarding significant developments?
Alexandra Benbadis: I think wearable injectors are becoming more mainstream and less intimidating as a delivery device. Years ago, we could only talk about vial and syringe — then we got prefilled syringes. Once we got comfortable talking about prefilled syringes, we got autoinjectors — and now we have wearable injectors. For many years in my career, the question was “prefilled syringe or autoinjector?” Now it’s becoming “prefilled syringe, autoinjector, or wearable injector?” I just think it’s great that they’re becoming part of the conversation. On the other hand, connected devices have been mainstream in consumer spaces for quite some time. Between fitness trackers, smartphones, and smart appliances, I think we expect everything to be connected now. Healthcare products obviously are not going to be the exception. Like wearable injectors, I think connected healthcare products are more mainstream now — and I think some manufacturers feel pressured to always have an element of connectivity even without proof that intended users need it.
What do you see as the greatest challenge facing the industry at the moment?
AB: For wearable injectors, I think a big challenge in the human factors space is user acceptance. Wearable injectors are unlike any other type of injection device, so users’ mental models will be disrupted when they handle a wearable injector for the first time. This, of course, can lead to some use issues like not knowing where the needle is, which could make using a wearable injector pretty intimidating. If we don’t equip our users with the right tools to get comfortable with wearable injectors (e.g., intuitive products, robust training), they might prefer using other injectors that are more “tried and true” even if they offer fewer benefits.
What current hot topic will you be addressing in your presentation, and what would you say makes it relevant to 2023?
AB: My presentation is about human factors best practices and considerations for wearable injectors, with a focus on how to con- duct productive early-stage usability studies and successful design validation studies. We have a regulatory imperative to design safe and effective products for our patients, so human factors is always relevant!
How would you like to see the market develop in the future, and where do you think the biggest growth area will be in 2023?
AB: Aside from [continuous glucose monitors], I think every wearable injector I’ve seen still requires patients to sit still while receiving their injection. I’d love to see wearables that give patients more mobility during their injections so that their treatment would have less of an impact on their schedule, activities, and quality of life. A lot of the world is focused on addressing climate change, so I hope that we’ll see growth in more sustainable manufacturing processes and materials usage.
And on a final note ... Why do you feel it is important for the industry to join this year’s conference?
AB: The way I learn about the industry is talking to people at these conferences. We can’t grow as an industry without communicating and sharing our ideas. If you want to be part of the change (or at least get a front row seat to it), you need to be in the room.
To register for the conference, visit here .
Transcript
00:00:01 [Music] hi everyone this is foreign [Music] it's not devices so the wearable injectors and connected devices Market has grown rapidly over the past few years so what key differences have you noticed in the last year regarding significant developments yeah thanks Katie first off I'm quite
00:00:55 excited for the conference and look forward to hearing all the great insights from others in Industry I think in particular for wearable injectors and connected devices these are two core Technologies for helping us achieve sort of therapy at home in particular our approach has been to look for wearable Technologies and connected device technologies that can help
00:01:28 patients have a choice at a minimum have a choice to either go to an IV infusion center for therapies as they would traditionally do or as we're seeing growing demand and interest for delivering these therapies at home and and the reason these two technologies are so key to that is because the wearable Technologies allow us to
00:01:54 deliver higher volume of drug than we could in a pre-filled syringe or an auto injector and and so that's one key change that we've seen in the past year is that more of the therapies that we want to move from IV to home have significant volume requirements they sometimes also have significant viscosity requirements that have to be
00:02:21 dealt with by some of the injectors but uh maybe more so than viscosity this increase in volume is really the way we can enable the home delivery of some of these medications and then on the connected device side whether it's the wearable itself that has connected components or that we're delivering other types of digital solutions for these patients what we're seeing the
00:02:50 need for is in order to support patients to feel confident and comfortable and competent with their home delivery digital tools and the types of data we can generate from the drug delivery devices but also even things like being able to do a quick video chat with a nurse can really enable these Technologies to be used more most effectively by patients so
00:03:20 those are some of the areas where I'm really excited to hear what others are doing and and how they're helping achieve sort of what you might call a more patient-centered view of drug delivery yeah and then I guess to just go on from that what do you see as the greatest challenge facing the industry at the moment
00:03:41 yeah there are so many um it's kind of hard to pick what might be at the top I would say I would say you know we're in the early days of understanding what the capabilities of some of these wearable Technologies are what is the highest volume we can deliver over what period of time I think on the patient-centered aspects of it what uh what can we do
00:04:11 better in the design of these solutions to make it even easier for patients so I think all of these therapies can be great but if a patient can't figure out how to do it for themselves or even with a caregiver at home overcoming that challenge is critical and in many ways we have to learn by doing and we have to get more experience
00:04:36 with patients using these products so I think that that's a couple of the biggest challenges that we Face especially on the technology side yeah and then on a final note um I know you've sort of mentioned this but why do you feel it's important for the industry to join this year's conference yeah I think it's critical for uh people to attend to learn the latest and
00:05:05 greatest uh both in what's available with these Technologies but perhaps in particular to understand uh what might be possible and where do we need to do more work or make more investment what types of patient populations these Technologies are most appropriate for ETC and so I think you know a conference like this is where we can all come
00:05:31 together and learn from each other um and then go back to our respective companies and sort of translate that into new developments new actions uh to improve the likelihood that these technologies will be successful for patients yeah well we can't wait to hear more from you and other speakers at the conference too um later in September in Boston and for everyone to see the full
00:05:55 agenda and book your place head to the SE media website and yeah we hope to see you there thank you Paul all right take care thank you
