Is Your Packaging Home-Healthcare Friendly?

Medical device packaging design will see a new set of opportunities and challenges as healthcare seeks to move towards at home healthcare, and decentralization.

If you pull the lens back and look at some of the biggest future challenges that we will experience in healthcare, patient access is at the top of the list. Health systems and clinics need to decompress utilization through asynchronous digital engagement, decentralization, telemedicine 5.0, wearable technologies, and other approaches. The velocity of the movement towards decentralization has accelerated with new technologies, and reimbursement models.

Here’s a snapshot of what I believe are the three most important things to keep in mind as we think about the decentralization of patient care.

1. Homecare staffing …

Regrettably the healthcare industry does not truly value the incredible importance of home healthcare providers. This fact is validated by their pay structure. Home Health and Personal Care Aides is the lowest paid health care job, with an average annual income of only $33,530, according to US Career Institute. This will need to change quickly to attract, retain, and inspire home care health providers. The humanistic and financial benefits that they provide are far greater than their compensation and, as a society, we need to create reasonable equilibrium in the work that they provide and the way in which they are compensated.

I believe that there will be latency, in terms of the recognition of their value when compared to the rate of increased pay rates. The best home healthcare staffing organizations and delivery organizations will do a far better job of not just improving pay for these important providers, creating value in terms of flexible schedules and an improved quality of work life.

… and homecare staffing’s impact on packaging design

We will need to take a far better look at how we create improved ergonomics, ease of use, and disposability of new home healthcare products. We typically take for granted that our customer is a healthcare provider and that they understand the nuances of medical packaging and management of sterile and non-sterile technologies. But that’s not always the case.

We will also need to improve their cosmetics. At-home healthcare packages need to look and feel more like a consumer product package to improve quality and value perception. This is part of the net totality of the user’s experience across the engagement of the package and device.

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2. Telemedicine adjuncts …

As we care for more patients at home, we will see a greater adoption to what I refer to as telemedicine 5.0. In the near future, telemedicine will be enabled by adjunct technologies to significantly improve diagnostic data during a telemedicine consult.

For example, when you sign up for your insurance, you will receive a telemedicine 5.0 kit that will include a range of technologies that will help the provider glean better information about your health state. These technologies will also include both sterile and non-sterile disposable components.

… and telemedicine adjunct’s impact on packaging design

Designers and manufacturers of medical devices and packages need to develop packaging that is easy to use and dispose of. There’s an opportunity to provide somewhat of a consumer feel that will be less intimidating to a home, healthcare worker, and the patient like.

The way in which the medical disposable is perceived by the consumer has much to do with the integrated package and device design. Consumers are increasingly concerned about filling the waste-stream unnecessarily. Minimalistic packaging is therefore ideal in the setting.

There are also opportunities to create layered package designs that provide both protection and sterile barriers that also provide a secondary-use value. For example, a technology that incorporates a vacuum-formed tray with a lid stock might serve as the best possible solution, as the tray could provide both improved protection, and perhaps a holding fixture during use.

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3. Point-of-care testing (POCT) …

For quality and safe home care to be effective it needs to have the ability to accurately diagnose, monitor, and treat patients remotely. This will require a significant increase in disposable testing solutions that will provide many new opportunities for healthcare packaging. The solutions are also being used in other decentralized models, including doctors’ offices and small remote clinics. Historically many of these tests required large centralized facilities or independent medical labs.

… and POCT’s impact on packaging design

Point-of-care testing will have a revolutionary impact on the future of patient care, and correspondingly the way we design and package testing solutions. The key is we need to build consumer centric design in both the disposable technologies and their corresponding packaging solutions.

The bottom line

As a society, we are rapidly moving towards home healthcare, and the broader decentralization of care. This provides an opportunity for medical package designers and manufacturers to build new consumer centric design models to ensure optimal ergonomics, sustainability, and overarching brand value.

In researching my book, Happy Work, one thing I discovered is that we have the ability to significantly improve the quality of work-life, through new best practices and the compensation for home healthcare workers. As an industry, I believe we all need to be their champions and support the home healthcare worker every way we can!