Usability in the Year 2045

Medical device developers should think to the future when attempting to understand usability.

Brian Buntz

No doubt about it, technological breakthroughs have empowered consumers tremendously in the past couple of decades. Now, you can do everything from make restaurant reservations to money transfers on your computing device of choice. The field of healthcare, however, has been slower to catch up. It is possible now to interact with doctors remotely or to, say, keep track of your health metrics in a Quantified Self-style fashion. But a considerable amount of healthcare is still administered the old-fashioned way: when you get sick or hurt yourself, you go to the doctor or the ER.

This leads medical device designers to consider clinicians as their core users in many cases. Physicians, together with payers and hospitals, are among the most powerful players in the current healthcare landscape. That seems to be changing, however.

Putting Patients First

As we plan for the future, and think about designing medical devices that will be relevant in ten, twenty, or even thirty years from now, we can imagine that the consumer--the patient--could be the most powerful entity in the healthcare food chain. Arming patients with sensors and giving them more accountability can ultimately help reduce healthcare costs. This can, for instance, improve the monitoring of chronic conditions and track the efficacy of healthcare treatments.

Stuart Karten, founder and president of Los Angeles-based product innovation firm Karten Design, will deliver an address at MD&M West on February 12 on this subject. Titled "Back to the Future: Usability in the Year 2045," Karten argues that as increasingly powerful health technology becomes integrated into the fabric of our everyday lives, healthcare will shift its focus from clinicians to patients. This means that understanding the needs of patients will have a growing importance in years to come--especially in the next few decades.

"To date, the medical industry has been focused on the usability needs of clinicians," Karten says. "But the healthcare landscape is changing, and new users are emerging. Most notably, patients and caregivers play a larger role than ever before, and will continue to be a driving force in the future of medical product design."

Dealing with Complexity

At present, most product developers emphasize physical and cognitive usability. In other words, they consider how people physically interact with medical devices. But in the future, human factors will be more complex, Karten says. "Three new usability considerations will emerge as medical devices are  adapted to the often messy and unpredictable needs of patients: emotion, development, and context. People are complex beings whose emotions impact their behavior. They change over time."

Another complex problem is the challenge of developing technologies that encourage compliance. To be able to help do that, device designers need to first understand the user's physical, cognitive, emotional, and social experiences, Karten says. "Recognizing all of these layers of complexity and balancing them through a holistic design approach will eliminate the friction between people and their products--leaving room for the user to create an emotional connection with a product."

The Power of Consumerization

Another trend helping fuel this trend is that of consumerization of healthcare. As the boundaries between consumer and medical devices continue to blur, patients benefit. The consumerization trend is leading to better products and better user experiences, Karten says, empowering patients and bringing them--rather than clinicians--to the forefront of usability design.

As we project into future decades, this trend will be even more inescapable. "In 30 years, health technology will be seamlessly integrating with a user's daily routine. It will be a personalized experience in which body-worn sensors interact with smart environments, and artificially intelligent coaches provide real-time feedback," Karten predicts.

Regulation Will Follow Innovation

How can regulation, which adjusts to technology trends in a gradual risk-averse manner, keep up with innovation, which is being fueled by exponentially developing technologies? The answer to that may be that it won't. Or rather that regulation will follow innovation. Examples of this already abound in the consumer world, Karten says. "Take Uber, which is disrupting the transportation industry by using today's technology--GPS tracking, smartphones, and automated payments--to make travel more convenient for consumers," he says. "Medical companies will begin to create the same kind of disruption to make healthcare more convenient for patients. It will create change too powerful for regulators to contain."

Brian Buntz is the editor-in-chief of MPMN and Qmed. Follow him on Twitter at @brian_buntz.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to our daily e-newsletter.