Battelle collaborates with OhioHealth's CME+I on conducting patient simulation testing.

With more scrutiny from FDA and more hospital restrictions, how can device manufacturers--especially early-stage companies--get their product to market successfully? One method that is significantly helping product designers is patient simulation. R&D firm Battelle (Columbus, OH) works with OhioHealth's Center for Medical Education + Innovation (CME+I) on providing the user feedback that designers need to make their products safer and more user friendly. Conducting usability testing avoids the patient privacy and safety hurdles that a company would face when testing the product on a human, while providing the advantage of producing real-world user feedback. Getting such feedback early in the design process is a critical part of reducing potentially deadly medical errors. Patient simulation also helps define a product's commercial stability by gathering an end-user's impressions and needs before and after market entry.