Diabetes Devices Deliver: Helping A Manufacturer Learn How To Help Patients

The Challenge

Which Civicom capabilities could we use to make it possible for our client to help diabetic patients improve their adjustment to using the client’s brand of insulin pump following medical recommendation, while learning how their product performed vs. other options?

The Solution

The client hired a research firm that specializes in the evaluation of medical devices. Using Civicom Front Row™, the research firm interviewed diabetic patients who had been recommended to move to the use of insulin pumps, as well as those who had experience of one year or more wearing them. The group was divided into these two segments.

The interviews involved understanding the challenges of the client’s insulin pump vs. other types, as well as what factors made the pump easier or harder to adjust to. This enabled the client to gain more insight into the experiences, struggles and needs involved in coping with this condition, and how their own product was perceived to perform. Through Front Row, the patients engaged in demonstrating their use of the pump, how they carried it outside their body, and what problems they typically ran into as a result of wearing it.

Front Row provides a researcher with the ability to observe a subject’s experience while also conversing with them as they go through a process. As a web-based tool that connects the subject’s webcam with the researcher’s computer, the researcher can conduct many interviews in a single day from their own location, with individual respondents who are virtually anywhere.

Civicom Facilitators take care of all of the technology needs and monitor the entirety of each interview, freeing the researcher to do their important job. In the case of the diabetic patients, the researcher learned much about what factors the client should be aware of in improving perception of their product, as well as suggested design modifications, and how to better market the device as a solution.