Designing for experience: how branded healthcare devices can compete against generics

Monoclonal antibodies offer promise in the fight against a wide range of diseases, including COVID-19. The length of the discovery process is a barrier to emergency use, however, and poses a commercial risk for pharmaceutical companies. Multidisciplinary innovation could step up the pace, says Verity Jackson.
Remote user testing allowed us to substantially accelerate the development of the CoVent™ ventilator. Dan Lock reviews the impact of social distancing on user research and finds that many of our necessary adaptations will continue to have value. Yet, each new study challenges us to come up with new approaches to inform medical device development.
Autologous cell therapies hold great promise in the treatment of many cancers but are generally produced using processes and equipment for which there are concerns as to whether they are sufficiently reliable to support scale-out to 1000s of systems. Medical device development holds important lessons for achieving the required reliability for cell therapy automation equipment.
From Velcro to human flight, biomimicry has inspired the development of products and industries. During the 2020s, microfabrication and other bottom-up approaches will likely lead to many more bio-inspired ideas achieving technical and commercial success, says Fred Hussain.
Inspired by the promise of CAR-T cell therapy, new technologies to combat the hostile solid tumour microenvironment are being developed, underpinned by innovations in intracellular delivery, say Megan McCandless and Stuart Lowe.
Click chemistry has come into its own in a wide range of life science applications and opens up opportunities that lie between chemistry, biology and material science, says Wenshu Xu.
Developing a medical device in weeks rather than years during the coronavirus pandemic was an extraordinary undertaking. Dan Strange reviews TTP’s “Project Jarre” to develop the CoVent(TM) ventilator and draws some lessons as to how – when needs must – faster medical device development is possible.
From smiley faces to diagnostic sensors, the possibility of using DNA as a nanofabrication material is gaining increasing attention. Gary Skinner explains “DNA Origami,” its applications and what is holding back its wider adoption into the marketplace.
Many companies face important early-stage decisions about how best to access cleanroom and laboratory facilities, equipment and know-how towards microfabrication – get these decisions wrong and progress to market can become painfully slow, says Fred Hussain.
Biomedical imaging and diagnostic platforms increasingly demand stable detection reagents and quantifiable signal output. Upconversion nanoparticles fit the bill and, in the hands of Wenshu Xu and Verity Jackson, allow for multiplex biomarker detection.