Chemical Reaction - Take my device
Cecilia Mendy, Owen Mumford, reveals the current and future initiatives at this drug delivery device business
EPM: Who are you and what do you do?
CM: Owen Mumford is an industry leader in medical device design and manufacturing.
With a 60-year history of medical device firsts, we offer innovations for capillary blood sampling and drug delivery from a broad base of proven self-injection and blood sampling platform devices and intellectual property.
These innovations help end-users and healthcare professionals deliver effective treatments for conditions such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and a wide range of additional therapy areas. Our solutions are used as part of patient self-management plans in the home and by hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, pharmacies, care homes and clinics globally.
EPM: What have you focussed on recently?
CM: Our focus is always on making a difference. We know it is essential to design a device that meets tangible end-user needs and makes it easier for them to adhere to their self-management routines. In order to ensure we get this right every time, our human factors experts research the requirements of the end-users and health care professionals and involve them in the development process as a product is moved through the design process to industrialisation. This can include formative user studies that provide feedback on the initial design, preliminary models and soft tooled product, which mimics the final product manufacture.
The key objective of user-centred healthcare is to improve the health outcomes of end-users by taking into consideration their needs, values, preferences and situation. By incorporating these requirements, our final product will not only benefit the end-user in the best way possible but also help reduce complaints, make it easier to obtain market acceptance, and increase the product lifecycle.
EPM: What is your latest service / innovation?
CM: Recently we were awarded the Red Dot award for Product Design for our new diabetes pen needle with built in remover, Unifine Pentips Plus.
Unifine Pentips Plus is the world’s first pen needle with built in remover, developed for end-users with diabetes who are self-injecting insulin or glucagon-like peptide-1 analogues. Unifine Pentips Plus is designed to encourage adherence to a good injection routine and is proven to increase the rate of pen needle change among end-users.
A study observing the impact of Unifine Pentips Plus on pen needle changing behaviour amongst people with diabetes, showed that when using Unifine Pentips Plus, the rate of pen needle change increased by 61% compared to their current pen needle.
With analysis from 2012 estimating that more than half of the 100 million people in the world who use insulin, use a pen device, this product is an example of our focus on making life simpler for the end user. The major negative outcomes that can arise when not adhering to a good injection routine, including frequent change of the pen needle, can consist of infection, dose inaccuracy and bruising.
EPM: How can you benefit the pharmaceutical sector?
CM: In addition to end-users needs and adherence issues, we understand the complexities of creating medical devices for partners with complex requirements and international markets. We develop medical device solutions both for our own Owen Mumford brand and for some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies.
We understand the importance of bringing a product to market on time and on budget. Our in-house research, design and engineering expertise are able to offer advanced concept to supply services, reducing the industrialisation risks associated with new product development.
EPM: Future plans?
CM: The medical device market continues to grow and innovate and we continue to ensure that we invest in new resources to enable our research and design team to design, develop and industrialise all of our new concepts into final product, as rapidly and smoothly as possible. With advanced 3D printing capabilities we are able to effectively prototype our products early in the development stage and iterate rapidly as we amend and adapt the design to deliver the required end user outcomes. This allows the team to evaluate any potential issues with components, without having to go through lengthy and costly tooling activities. It also enables them to check how mechanisms work and how they look and feel, before committing to tooling.
This allows us to ensure the product is suitable for the end-user as well as fit for industrialisation and manufacture.
As we look ahead, our focus is on designing and manufacturing high quality products that meet and fulfil regulatory requirements and the end-user and healthcare provider industry’s needs. Our motivation is to make lives easier. As the market changes, we continue to innovate by bringing together world-class research, design and engineering expertise to create products that improve lives and reduce healthcare costs.