New apps for smart phones and tablets, developed for Novo Nordisk, will enable end users to administer their medication better than ever before. Professionals will also benefit from the tablet app’s groundbreaking qualities as a training device.
This case illustrates the very different yet equally significant potential in Novo Nordisk’s new tablet and smartphone apps, developed by Designit. The tablet app is for doctors, nurses and others working with diabetes in a professional context. This app presents the different products and serves as a training device with animated directions, e.g. showing life-sized hands performing various procedures. It is a tremendously valuable add-on educational resource for end users and healthcare professionals.
Designit suggested that an app is the perfect way to ensure instant and constant access to professional training in the use of products related to diabetes treatment. Studies of both types of users – end users and professionals – concluded that their needs were very different and could not be met with the same apps. After all, you don’t carry your tablet with you in your pocket like you do with your phone, but the tablet does represent a second-to-none training device ideal for professionals interacting with each other, sharing insights and a learning experience.
A tablet for professionals
Novo Nordisk have a wide range of insulin pens, each of which suit different needs, and should be chosen with careful consideration to each user. The functions of each pen vary, and healthcare professionals need a good understanding of all of them in order to be able to accurately educate the end users. Add to this the fact that there are many insulin pens available today from the other major pharma companies in the insulin market, and the situation can become extremely complicated for healthcare professionals. In order to help with this task, Novo Nordisk and Designit set out to create an app that would be as visual, as helpful and as illuminating as possible, in order to provide a ‘1 stop shop’ on information about Novo Nordisk insulin pens. It acts as an extremely useful supplementary tool to support both doctors and nurses, and also as an effective training device.
The app is targeted towards doctors, nurses, and other professionals working with diabetes in a professional context, and provides a thorough guide to the different pens. It also serves as a training device with animated directions, and is a tremendously valuable add-on educational resource for end users and healthcare personnel.
There’s no doubt that tablets are going to make major changes in the healthcare world, from training to day-to-day procedures. This is just the beginning.
Stuart Karten Design, a Los Angeles-based design and innovation firm, recently put together this infograpic on wireless health, including mobile technology, medical and healthcare, showing how 4 out of 5 doctors plan to buy an iPad within the next year, and how this connective technology is set to change the face of healthcare forever.
In the pocket, all the time
The smart phone apps are for the end users. One of the key challenges for people suffering from diabetes is how to make sure that they always follow the right procedure when dispensing their medicine. This app is an animated quick guide promoting the instructions found in the inserts that are part of the product packaging. Once the patients have received directions from their physician and read the instructional insert common to each insulin pen, they will still carry a guide with them on their smartphone to make sure any doubts are easily clarified, and even more importantly, that any self-developed injection procedures are avoided.
With the app on your phone – a complete guide in your pocket – you are far less likely to develop your own ways of administering your medication, and will have the information you need, on you, almost all the time.
“Global pharmaceutical companies have always been looking for ways to be right next to their end users when the need arises. Because of the emergence of apps that is now possible. It is potentially a very valuable link between user and company, which has previously been missing,” says David Fellah, CEO of Designit.
The potential for further developing this means of communicating with end users is vast, not only for pharmaceutical companies but in many other industries as well. Through many different ways of applying personal data, the apps will, in the future, become highly customised personal assistants.
“The number of people with diabetes is growing rapidly around the world. With these apps, they have the opportunity to live a better life with their condition, making sure that they always get the right treatment. These apps are yet another layer in the continuous improvement of the lives of insulin users and their relatives. And this is just the beginning. In the future, we will see far more ways of using this technology to improve conditions for insulin users,” predicts David Fellah.
