 | To learn more, watch the full interview or read the article, "Streamlining Prefilled Syringe Use for Adrenal Crisis Patients," at Healthcare Packaging. |
Elisabeth Cuneo: So, what major challenges does the patient population have and how does the device help solve for those challenges?
Julia Anthony: So, when you're having one of these emergencies called an adrenal crisis, you're physically and cognitively heading south and deteriorating. You're shaking, you're vomiting, this is if you haven't already passed out. There's a lot of disorientation. So, to do fine motor skills of mixing medication when you're in one of these emergencies is very hard to do. It's also hard for caregivers to remember how to do the 14 steps when there's stress going on.
One thing our CEO likes to say is, “everything is going fine until you're punched in the face,” which I think is also a Mike Tyson quote. But even if you're trained, it’s hard to remember to do all of those steps when someone's dying in front of you.
So, what we wanted to do was to have fewer steps to prepare the medication and then create devices that are easily operable regardless of maybe your dexterity with your hands, or even your eyesight.
People who have these events are typically on corticosteroids for very long periods of time, which can have an impact on bone density as well as eyesight and other things. So, we wanted to focus on the usability of the product, and make sure that we reduced the number of steps with how the medication was presented to the user.
And then the third thing is making sure they could be easily carried on the person or with the person, which is what we're mainly focused on right now, at least on the human factor side of things.
