A leading London product innovation consultancy has clinched a top international award for the Merck Serono easypod - the first electronic growth hormone injection device. The auto-injector won a 2008 iF International Forum Design award in the product design category.
Easypod features a number of electronic control functions that improve patients' ease of daily use and requires fewer steps. It also reduces the perception of pain during injection, ensures reliability and safety in use and storage, and meets medication compliance. The advantages include:
* Comfort settings - including adjustable injection depth and speed
* Dose volume memory
* Compliance logging - date of last injection
* Split dose management options
* Automatic safe needle loading and detachment - the needle is never handled or seen
Alun Wilcox, Director of Medical at PDD, said: "We are delighted with the award. easypod is the first electro-mechanical device for the subcutaneous injection of medical products and goes a long way to making the entire process both physically and psychologically less stressful for all involved.
"Our ability to offer an integrated service including research, interaction design, human factors engineering, industrial design and engineering enabled us to produce a product that fulfilled all these needs."
Explaining the process, Alun said: "PDD designers and engineers worked closely with our human sciences team to understand the relationship between people, products and the environments of use and then translate the user insights into clear cues for ongoing design development.
"These early discussions with children, parents and practitioners allowed the team to understand the emotional and practical challenges and - through the use of form, materials, colours and personalisation options - humanise the sophisticated technology employed in the device."
The award follows the Gold Medal in the Medical Design Excellence awards that PDD won in New York for the device earlier this year.
The iF award will be presented to PDD at the world-leading CeBIT exhibition in Hannover, Germany in March 2008.