The Future of Devices is NOT in Devices (as we know them today)

By Aidan Petrie, Chief Innovation Officer & Co-Founder, Ximedica

It’s no secret that connectivity technologies are advancing and creating new opportunities within the medical space to provide value to patients, caregivers, payers and providers. Enter the realm of the connected health ecosystem in which we find ourselves today…

If there are three primary types of innovation (platform, adjacent and disruptive) connecting your device to an ecosystem has the opportunity to be all of these and do so without the vast investment of bringing an entirely new device to market.

Increasingly within the medical device development arena there is a law of diminishing returns. That is to say that the incremental improvements that come out of designing an entirely new device may not merit the time and resources involved in bringing that improvement to market and/or meeting the regulatory bar that moves ever higher.

Connected health devices offer a relatively inexpensive route to creating higher value for the users of a particular device without changing the primary modes of use.

A system of connected devices can provide data, context, and advice on many aspects relating to the performance, location, servicing, and that is just the beginning…

New payment models can be conceived that lower the cost of purchase and/or track adherence by a patient to a given regimen.

Connected devices provide a new level of performance to an existing product where exchanged data that has been collected can be analyzed, adding more value to both the developer and users. New services can be created based on that analysis.

The key to creating the most value out of the idea of device + connection is to understand who wants and values what information. Before you “connect” your device, figure out the why before you drown yourself in data that no one actually wants.

The opinions expressed in this blog post are the author’s only and do not necessarily reflect those of MassDevice.com or its employees.

 

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