The GenNews from Sagentia Summer 2013

Utility underground asset mapping technology

Algorithms enable low cost 3D visualisation in surgery

How information systems are reshaping healthcare delivery

Device powered chemistry in personal care – greater than the sum of its parts?

ContentsContents

Introduction

02 Introduction

03 News

03 Update

04 Feature Algorithms enable low cost 3D visualisation in surgery

06 Feature How information systems are reshaping healthcare delivery

08 Technology insight Wireless communications systems – improving the way medical devices work

09 Case study OXEMS – Utility underground asset mapping technology

10 Focus on Device powered chemistry in personal care – greater than the sum of its parts?

11 Focus on The industrial design revolution

Welcome to the Summer 2013 Gen! It’s a privilege to be addressing the front

page of The Gen as Sagentia’s Managing Director; I’ve been writing articles and reading colleagues' contributions for eight years. During these years I’ve come to know our customers, capabilities and opportunities well and am proud to be introducing our work to you. Mick Withers and I took up the reigns from Brent Hudson who resigned at the end of October last year after three great years leading the company. With positive year-end financial results recently announced, we are both working hard, along with the rest of our great team at Sagentia, to grow and expand the value of our services to you, our clients.

To be successful in our business, we need to stay on top of science and technology breakthroughs coming out of academia and industry and we need to understand the challenges and drivers affecting our clients’ markets. This means that our consultants often have interesting and diverse perspectives that we like to capture and share where possible. In this issue, we have articles including a mathematician opining the future of surgical imaging (p4), a life scientist challenging the status quo in healthcare thinking (p6) and a physicist/chemist inviting the consumer industry to bring formulation science and

devices together in the pursuit of innovation (p10). These are all written by individuals who have strong opinions on how technology can be made to serve the markets they work across. Elsewhere in this issue, on p9 we highlight how our work with OXEMS helped them turn academic output into a commercially viable, market ready product for underground asset mapping, and on p8 we discuss wireless communication systems in medical devices.

The first few months of 2013 have been very busy for us and in our largest market – North America – there is significant anecdotal and empirical evidence that corporate cash reserves are strong; operational mandates to control fixed cost remain tight and R&D drive is healthy. These three factors are building the case for deeper and longer term R&D partnerships with some of our clients. If the notion of having a specialist R&D team ‘on-call’ sounds appealing – let us know! Mick and I would welcome the opportunity to visit you.

Dan Edwards Managing Director

News

Sagentia grows expertise in industrial design and usability

agentia recently acquired Quadro Design and has invested in its usability capabilities.

Quadro works with clients to improve the effectiveness of their product design, making sure they go to market with the confidence of achieving commercial success. The company is now operating as an independent but integrated division of the Sagentia Group.

With industrial design and usability fundamental, and increasingly essential ingredients in innovation and product development, this acquisition demonstrates our desire to grow Sagentia’s share of the global product development market.

Dan Edwards, Managing Director at Sagentia, comments: “We have enjoyed collaborating with Quadro for several years, and are delighted to formally welcome them into our team. The value this brings – having design and technology staff co-located – is clear to our clients. Equally, as the medical/healthcare industry increasingly focuses on usability of medical devices we know the time is right to invest in human factors and strategic design capability.”

With Quadro and new usability experts, Sagentia is able to take a unique approach to industrial design, focusing not just on the product but on designing the user experience.

S Sagentia's Boston officeWe've now settled into our larger Boston based US headquarters.

Our contact details are:One Beacon Street Suite 2300 Boston MA 02108

T: +1 617 896 0213

agentia recently announced that we have completed initial

alpha prototype development of the RESOLUTION™ Microbial Genotyping System that we are developing for PathoGenetix.

As PathoGenetix’s technology and product development partner, we’re working with them across the full product development lifecycle: helping to take two initial bread board systems and combining them into an intuitive and usable system with a smaller footprint, as well as a lower per unit cost base.

Our involvement initially focused on concept validation and voice of the customer analysis across worldwide sites. The output of this effort helped PathoGenetix’s management to determine and define the company’s go-to-market strategy. Subsequently, the focus has been on developing the architecture and delivering the electro-mechanical and

electro-optical aspects that enable the GSS technology to be taken to market. This has included the detailed design and development of state-of-the-art custom optics, robotics, fluidics, pneumatics, and embedded and application software.

“Sagentia has been a great product development partner. Working with them has allowed us to get to market faster with concept to delivery of the new RESOLUTION™ System in 18 months,” said PathoGenetix CEO Ann Merrifield. “This exciting technology has a lot of potential in food safety and we look forward to demonstrating its potential as we take it forward to commercial launch.”

Take a look at our Introduction to Sagentia video on YouTube. It gives a great overview of who we are and what we do.

Sagentia and MIT Technology Review: 10 Breakthrough Technologies

agentia and MIT Technology Review recently co-hosted a special event

to present and discuss 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2013.

The event saw Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief at MIT Technology Review, explaining the selection process and how the technologies could expand the scope of human possibilities. Dr Robin Lee, Chief Technology Officer at Sagentia, then discussed how these technologies could be used in a broader product development context, specifically highlighting technical challenges and market-focused opportunities.

The technologies selected by MIT Technology Review range across industries from energy, materials and biomedicine to communications and IT, and include additive manufacturing, Baxter the Blue Collar Robot, supergrids, ultra-efficient solar power and smart watches.

Read our analysis on the technologies here: www.sagentia.com/ 10breakthroughtechnologies

SS

Sagentia delivers alpha prototype of new Microbial Genotyping System for PathoGenetix Inc

Summer 2013 The Gen 03

Feature

Algorithms enable low cost 3D visualisation in surgery By Ross Jones

The 3D interpretation of 2D images is now commonplace. Double-click on a spot down the road in Streetview and Google will transport you there. Cars in TV adverts are realistically superimposed

on mountaintops. Harry Potter is seen on a broomstick swooping around a castle that only exists in a computer. The mathematics and algorithms behind this trickery have the potential to transform medical imaging and should complement the recent advances in minimally invasive and robotic assisted surgery, but have yet to find acceptance in the operating theatre. Nonetheless, researchers are making impressive progress with the more complex problems that arise in surgical visualisation and navigation. There is a gap between theory and practice that should be explored.

People are naturally good at 3D interpretation. If you were to walk through a building, you should develop a good sense of its 3D structure and overall layout. Furthermore, you should also have a good idea of the path you took. The fact that you have stereo vision is not sufficient to explain this capability – you could achieve the same feat with one eye closed. Instead, it relies on synthesising 2D images taken from multiple viewpoints.

In theory, if you were to carry a video camera with you, it should be possible to hand the footage over to a computer and have it perform the same task: reconstruct the 3D geometry of the building and retrace your

path through it. This is known as ‘Structure from Motion’ (SfM).

If a robot is performing the task for its own benefit, it’s known as ‘Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping’, or SLAM.

The mathematical feasibility of SfM is simple to demonstrate, but it’s difficult to find an efficient algorithm. That problem is due to perspective, which makes the equations for imaging highly non-linear. Tomasi and Kanade realised that if perspective is eliminated, for example by using cameras with telephoto lenses, then SfM can be solved using simple matrix algebra. Their 1992 paper on the ‘factorisation method’ laid the foundation for modern approaches to SfM.

Subsequent research quickly built up the capabilities of the method. Iterative versions of factorisation allowed for increasing amounts of perspective. Different approaches were developed for handling ‘missing data’, ie the (very common) case that not every point appears in every image. Different types of data were able to be incorporated, eg prior knowledge that points lie on a line or a plane, or observations of an object’s shadow.

Streamlined algorithms and advances in hardware enabled ‘real-time’ SfM. As an early example of near-real-time reconstruction, Takeo Kanade’s ‘Virtualised Reality™’ system was used in the 2001 SuperBowl by CBS to create action replays from novel viewpoints. State-of-the-art systems can now track around 100 features at frame rates of 30Hz.

Current research is focused on tracking deformable objects. With enough cameras, a dynamic scene could be treated as a sequence of static scenes, each reconstructed using basic SfM methods. If the objects in the view are assumed to deform in simple (but unknown) ways, fewer cameras can be used and SfM methods can be used to determine the modes of

deformation as well as 3D structure and motion.

All of these developments have been trialled for surgical applications. For example, the author developed a system for reconstructing the geometry of the ear canal from endoscope images, to assist the fitting of hearing aids. SfM has been used to provide off-line 3D reconstructions of surgical procedures for training purposes. In laparascopic chest or bowel surgery, with the lungs deflated or the abdominal cavity inflated, multiple endoscopic cameras could be used to present the surgeon with a wide field 3D view of the anatomy, equivalent to what might be seen with the patient fully ‘opened up’.

ChallengesSfM has yet to make it into commercial systems that are used regularly in the operating theatre. The key obstacle according to Danail Stoyanov, a leading researcher in SfM at University College London, is demonstrating a real clinical benefit. This seems odd, given the capabilities of SfM, but there are two important aspects to this.

Firstly, it is difficult to validate an SfM system and thereby demonstrate that it is safe.

04 The Gen Summer 2013

Feature

SfM software is complex and difficult to make robust: features may be mismatched between images, iterative algorithms may fail to converge properly, small measurement errors may lead to large errors in the reconstruction. Surgical companies are comfortable with mechanics and still learning to embrace electronics and software: SfM takes them well beyond their comfort zone.

Secondly, existing optical systems provide similar functionality. Calibrated tracking systems allow real-time registration of surgical instruments with

pre-operative MRI and CAT images. They involve an expensive setup and have limited accuracy when attempting to infer the position of distal end of a long instrument from a view of its proximal end, but are relatively simple to validate. Stereo endoscopes also provide the surgeon with a real-time 3D view without the need for any computer trickery. In the simple case, where the surgeon directly looks through the endoscope, he obtains a narrow field of view and/or limited depth cues. In robotic systems, notably the da Vinci system by Intuitive Surgical, the surgeon

views multiple endoscopic images on a monitor and effectively performs the SfM task in his head.

Routes to adoptionThere are two likely routes to the adoption of SfM. Firstly, SfM could be used to augment other systems in a way that poses no risk. Danail Stoyanov is using SfM to provide automatic registration of multispectral images of tissue. A number of groups at Johns Hopkins University are working on surgical vision systems, and one project that could provide a

safe, demonstrable benefit uses SfM post-surgery to evaluate the skill with which a surgeon has managed a robotic surgical system.

The other route is to piggy-back on advanced systems like the da Vinci robot. This has proven to be an effective platform for putting state-of-the-art technologies in the hands of the surgeon. In the case of SfM, the system already works with multiple endoscopic views and tracks instruments through encoders. This information could be used to ‘pre-condition’ the SfM calculations and check for errors in the 3D reconstruction, mitigating the complex problems of robustness that a vision-only system is faced with.

ConclusionThe irony then, is that a low-cost vision technology which consumers will soon use on their smart phones and iPads is likely to find its way into the operating theatre via a multi-million dollar robotic surgery system. The academic research in SfM is now very sophisticated; someone with the art of Steve Jobs may be required to create an implementation that is simple, robust and has obvious clinical benefits.

Interested to know more? Contact Ross.Jones@sagentia.com

Summer 2013 The Gen 05

Feature

How information systems are reshaping healthcare deliveryBy Niall Mottram & David Pettigrew

With continuing revelations in connectivity, data handling and micro processing, information has never been so plentiful. While some have viewed this plethora of information as dangerous (see the increasing rates of patient self-diagnosis thanks to Web MD etc), it is more commonly being embraced as an enabler. An enabler because of the possibilities to push diagnosis and treatment away from traditional centralised points of care and into domestic environments. An enabler because of the possibilities for new business models. An enabler because of the potential to give the physician unprecedented visibility of their patient’s progress, while at the same time empowering the patients themselves to take more responsibility for their own care.

But if your business is built on designing, developing and manufacturing medical devices, how do you leverage information? You can clearly use user feedback, crowd

sourcing and focus groups to improve your products, but isn’t there a bigger opportunity out there?

Large medtech companies certainly believe so and many of the big names have already publicly announced that they want to integrate real time data management and decision support into their next generation products to facilitate the move into remote diagnosis and monitoring.

This has been facilitated by a move from standalone products to entire ecosystems of ‘smart’ connected devices. Diabetes management is in the vanguard of this new trend, with companies like Medtronic, Roche and Dexcom moving away from standalone Point of Care devices to networked systems consisting of devices

like wearable patches for monitoring glucose, insulin pumps and mobile apps. These systems are set to become the gold standard for diabetes care. In hospitals, devices are increasingly being networked and connected into hospital information systems (HIS’s) to ensure relevant clinical data are received by the attending physician at critical points in the care pathway. An example of this at the ward level may include networked bedside monitors linked into a central hub, which utilises Clinical Decision Support Algorithms to alert nurses of a critical event. In addition, the use of centralised servers which log anonymised patient data from a number of sites and use these data to train algorithms which support diagnosis is also an increasing trend in fields like cardiology and image analysis.

These ‘connected health’ systems are designed to address several unmet needs (see Table 1). Through mobile medical apps at one end of this spectrum and bespoke treatment devices at the other, these companies are utilising years of valuable user insights to produce devices which blur the boundary between medical and consumer products. While consumer/patient acceptance is important, particularly for home care devices, these user insights are also crucial for developing devices which minimise the risk of patient harm through user error. If these considerations are navigated successfully, these systems will become increasingly important for physicians who wish to monitor their patient’s progress between consultations and for payers who wish to receive evidence of treatment compliance.

“Healthcare is changing” how many times have you

heard that? Probably more than you can remember.

But it really is and now there is increasing consensus

on exactly how. Five years ago the messages centred

on incremental innovations and preserving margins.

Last year it was ‘Obamacare’ and the huge implications

on reimbursement mechanisms and cost pressures.

Now the hot topic isn’t products or legislation, it's

information. But why is this the case and what does

it mean to the 2nd largest US business industry?

06 The Gen Summer 2013

Feature

Ultimately, they may also support the patient’s decision making by providing automated advice on the management of their condition. These tools will eventually pull certain responsibilities away from physicians to patients, transforming regulation in the process. The functionality of these devices will vary based on their technical sophistication, but the end goals are the same: support the clinician’s decision making and empower the patient.

Manufacturers are facing a number of unfamiliar challenges around developing these ‘connected health’ devices, particularly for those that blur the boundary between medical and consumer devices. For example, while the rising prominence of smartphone apps at first glance provides an easy route to a ‘consumer friendly’ user experience for their connected systems, the regulatory landscape, particularly in the US, remains highly uncertain. Manufacturers and regulators are increasingly concerned about:

• How rapid changes in smartphone hardware and operating systems will affect the intended function of their medical devices;

• A lack of clarification on how the FDA will determine which health apps require regulation;

• The challenges of protecting the privacy and security of personal health information; and

• The development cost/time that the medical app could incur if their products require FDA approval.

Depending on the level of risk of the intended connected health system, when faced with these issues manufacturers often conclude that it is still cheaper and less risky in the long run to develop a bespoke connected hardware and software that they can control entirely. There is, however, a middle ground. Smart devices developed by the manufacturer (containing sophisticated embedded algorithms) can perform the ‘high risk’ data processing functions, and they can in turn transmit the result to the smartphone which displays the data to the user. In this way, the power of a smartphone interface is brought to bear without adding in the extra risk of using the ‘unregulated’ smartphone processor itself to generate the data.

Looking further into the future, ‘connected health’ systems will give medtech companies the opportunity to leverage the information acquired from them to build new services and solutions in addition to new devices. This information will place them ideally to develop an unparalleled vision of the care pathway for a particular disease.

These companies will use these new clinical information services to make patient data and related information available throughout the patient care continuum – during diagnosis upstream on the clinical environment, through to disease management downstream in post-operative care. By employing this methodology for specific diseases, medtech companies can ‘own the disease’ from inception, greatly expanding patient interaction points and ‘locking in’ treatment along the care continuum.

The opportunity to ‘own’ a disease by managing treatment along the patient care continuum is one that offers potentially great returns, a point not lost on big medtech as they jockey for position across a myriad of disease states. Ultimately no one organisation will ‘win’ this race, but the benefits for us all as users of healthcare services promise to be great—the information revolution 2.0 has begun.

Interested to know more? Contact Niall.Mottram@sagentia.com or David.Pettigrew@sagentia.com

'The opportunity to 'own' a disease by managing treatment along the patient care continuum is one that offers potentially great returns'

Table 1: Benefits of ‘connected health’ systems include:

Improved healthcare access in remote settings

Increased access to specialist knowledge

Easier collection of clinically relevant data outside clinical settings

Improved patient compliance with treatment

Alerts for acute events Greater patient mobility

Management of lifestyle to reduce disease progression and/or prevent co-morbidities

Improved infection control with less requirement for surface cleaning

Incentivising consumer fitness and wellness market

Evidence of compliance linked to reimbursement

Summer 2013 The Gen 07

Technology insight

Wireless communications systems – improving the way medical devices workBy Mark Tuckwell

There has been growing interest in the use of wireless technology in medical devices, also called ‘Connected Health’, over the last few years. And although there are still a number of technical and commercial challenges, we are seeing positive signs that this market might finally be taking off. So what are the opportunities and how do we approach the technical development aspects at this stage of the market and technology maturity?

Areas of opportunity

There are significant economic and market drivers for monitoring patients at a distance. Importantly, connected health promises to deliver against two of the hot topic areas in the industry: improved health effectiveness and better cost efficiency. So although connected health has been known as an area with opaque reimbursement guidelines, products that can demonstrate against cost and effectiveness should have market and reimbursement appeal.

From an application perspective, we see a number of interesting opportunities for remote monitoring between the home and clinics, within a clinic or even between clinics, in areas including:

• Vital signs monitoring

• Respiration monitoring

• Sleep management

• Drug compliance monitoring

• Diabetes management

• Wellness monitoring

Product development & technical realities

Some of the initial barriers to adoption of wireless technology in healthcare include concerns over data security and reliability, lack of dedicated spectrum availability, limited availability of commercial medical hardware solutions, burdens of regulatory

approval and uncertain commercial viability of the end products. However, many of these concerns are now being addressed and although they remain important discussion points in any development path most can be solved by prudent spectrum selection for the medical device and the appropriate level of customisation.

There are two distinct ways in which to approach wireless connectivity of medical devices. The first is to use a mature technology which utilises one of the ISM bands. This portion of the spectrum is shared by many commercial wireless devices including wireless computer networks. Using wifi has the advantage that the medical device can be connected to a backbone of wireless hotspots, eg using an existing hospital network, and the investment will be relatively low from a technology perspective. The drawback of this approach is that it is power hungry and cannot be used if you have very small size requirements. Where direct connection to a hospital network is not required, the use of bluetooth low energy devices is a possibility. These enable smaller, lower power, lower data rate when compared with wifi, making them suitable for personal health monitoring.

But while the use of Wifi and Bluetooth might be off the shelf, there are still a number of customisation options you can make to optimise this approach. For example there are considerable benefits to be had by paying careful attention to areas such as architecture design, choice of bands and spectrum, antenna design, data and power consumption and emissions standards.

The second approach is to use a custom transmitter and receiver operating in the spectrum set aside for medical use. Using a less crowded spectrum can result

in a more robust solution. This approach would meet very demanding requirements (eg extremely low power, high data rates and/or very small size) and could be designed exactly to your specific needs, but will also involve significant development time, and therefore spend, as the maturity of chip sets and solutions to make use of dedicated medical bands are not yet readily available. Again you will need to clearly define your architecture, antenna design, data and power requirements, emissions requirements and perhaps most notably need to pay particular attention to meeting the required industry standards.

Looking to the future

The recent introduction of the Medical Area Body Networks (MBAN) spectrum, operating at 2.4 GHz, aims to introduce a step change in the use of small, low power, moderate data rate and robust bodyworn transceivers. Philips, Zarlink and Texas Instruments are all proponents of the wireless MBAN spectrum so expect to see semiconductor solutions for this band soon. An alternative to wireless MBAN is to consider the human body as the transmission medium. Using the body provides a stable, reliable communication channel with few radiated emissions. Body coupled communications would enable low power, high reliability and secure transmission of data. Even while waiting for these developments to happen, we see a number of opportunities in this space and there is a large choice of communication technologies which are suitable for enabling wireless connectivity on a medical device. The key is defining the opportunity and customising your development approach so that your end product appropriately fits your strategic market objectives.

Interested to know more? Contact Mark.Tuckwell@sagentia.com

08 The Gen Summer 2013

Case study

OXEMS is a University of Oxford start-up which offers a fully integrated underground asset management system that gives utilities full visibility of their network. They needed to determine how best to optimise the system for manufacture and worked with Sagentia to design the core RF elements of the OXEMS solution and turn an academic concept into a commercially viable product.

OXEMS: Utility underground asset mapping technology

ChallengeThe OXEMS rFINDGoTo™ solution includes tags, detectors and a database with automatic data logging and instant recall, allowing utility assets to be mapped, located and identified with precision. This is important when utility companies or local councils need to update or repair their assets and want to avoid costly and often error prone underground interventions.

In 2010, OXEMS had just been spun out of the University of Oxford by Isis Innovation. The start-up had rights to an initial tagging technology that had been developed by Professor David Edwards at the University of Oxford as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) Mapping the Underworld challenge.

Although proven at a concept level, OXEMS needed to determine how best to optimise the system for manufacturing.

This included needing to identify the appropriate number of tag IDs that should be used and how to optimally allocate that spectrum within realistic manufacturing tolerances.

ApproachSagentia was brought into the project as a technology and product development partner to conduct a feasibility study and help turn the academic output into a commercially viable product.

Working closely with OXEMS, the Sagentia team looked at cost models, evaluated system performance and ranges and undertook a technology assessment of the tags and accompanying equipment.

Having determined the best approach, we then worked with OXEMS to develop manufacturing tolerances, electromagnetic models and electronic prototypes.

BenefitOXEMS now has a fully developed technology that is technically sound, market ready and commercially attractive for the UK utility market. The company has gone on to complete field trials with fully functioning equipment at customer sites around the country.

Kevin Gooding, CEO at OXEMS, comments: "At last utility companies have the one tool needed to transform the economics of underground asset management. OXEMS’ ability to tag, register, map and pinpoint each buried asset is the 21st century digital toolkit of the future. Sagentia was a key partner in helping us progress our solution from the university research environment to the market."

Through the use of advanced sensor technologies and data fusion models, companies like OXEMS are delivering ‘smarter infrastructure’.

Summer 2013 The Gen 09

Device powered chemistry in personal care - greater than the sum of its parts? By Lucy Mullice & Peter Luebcke

Device assisted chemistry provides innovation headroom for personal care companies that are

in a highly competitive industry worth over $300bn globally. Devices offer new opportunities for intellectual property creation and a much-welcomed distinction from the crowd through greater efficacy. But how do you make this happen?

In the case of skincare, application of a topical formulation to the skin is straightforward, so use of a device requiring extra expense to do the same thing is difficult to justify. For a device to be attractive and worthwhile it needs to add additional therapeutic benefit and demonstrate market differentiation. Similarly in haircare, consumers are unlikely to invest in a passive implement to apply a hair serum when their fingers or even a comb would suffice. A more compelling approach requires investment in the development of a device with greater functionality which can give truly breakthrough performance – an approach regularly adopted in the medical industry. So why can’t we do the same in the consumer sector?

The main challenge is to choose the right enabling technologies that can be exploited to demonstrably increase efficacy. Top of this list are technologies such as light (eg photodynamic therapy), heat, microwave, friction-release encapsulation, iontophoresis and sonophoresis, amongst others. Typically when combined with a formulation, these technologies, embedded as part of a device, will do one or more of the following:

1. Deliver the ‘active’ substance more deeply or in a more targeted fashion than could be achieved topically;

2. Release the active from a stabilised formulation ‘activating’ it in situ only when and where required;

3. Trigger a chemical change (eg photochemical) from an inert to a biochemically reactive state to have an effect on the surrounding physiology;

4. Measure the current condition (eg hair damage, skin colour etc) and use this measurement to tailor the treatment.

The range of possible combinations of biochemical actives and device/energy modalities is vast. Some examples of potential innovative device-formulation combinations could include concepts such as:

• A device where substances are delivered through the epidermis to the dermis (eg ultrasonically) and then activated with LEDs photodynamically to form a collagen expression stimulating active in situ to target anti-ageing;

• An iontophoretic device that delivers anionic or polar active molecules to a depth within the epidermis to enhance or suppress melanogenesis depending on the desired outcome (ie tanning vs. lightening respectively);

• A device in which a keratin modifying active is evenly spread over the hair and fused (eg by RF heating) to the outer cuticle forming a smooth outer layer, therefore adding shine and strength.

Importantly, the traditional formulation-only company considering a move to device powered chemistry will need to consider the resulting mode of action and the claims it intends to make about the product to abide by the regulatory guidelines around cosmetics, drugs and medical devices.

In addition, the development dynamic that characterises device innovation and formulation chemistry innovation is very different so this will also need to be managed carefully.

The device element combined with formulation can bring great additional value by increasing efficacy, enhancing safety claims and/or reducing the quantities of expensive active components through more efficient targeting. But for consumer companies to get it right, they need to both exploit the right technologies and fine-tune the synergy between the device and the chemistry. If they get that right, chemistry in devices can become a key enabler to gaining greater market appeal in this field.

The ‘brand bundle’

One of the key opportunities offered by a device assisted chemistry approach is the offer of a ‘brand bundle’, providing brand lock-in to consumables and therefore driving core product revenues. Clarisonic’s Opal Sonic Infusion anti-aging sonic ‘micro-massage’ system and NUSKIN’s ageLOC™ Galvanic Spa iontophoretic system both incorporate a device and an associated serum and claim to deliver the active deeper than manual application. Brand bundling not only enhances revenues from a product line, it also conveys a message of a deep scientific understanding of the target problem, whether it is a therapeutic device that enhances efficacy of the chemistry or a diagnostic in-store device that can assess an individual’s condition and personalise the product to them.

Need help with your device strategy? Contact Peter.Luebcke@sagentia.com

Focus on

10 The Gen Summer 2013

Focus on

The industrial design revolution By Prof Phil Gray

Industrial design and its role in the business context has changed radically over the last decade. Its practice spans a

wider range of skills including service design, user interaction design and corporate branding, and its role has become a powerful business tool – enabling governments and enterprises to adopt game changing approaches to creating new products, services and environments.

Industrial design is becoming an agent of change, in a similar way to the IT revolution of the 80s, which forced companies to evaluate how they operated and gave them an opportunity to streamline their business processes. By emphasising the consumer experience, as well as providing a common language that binds organisations together to meet their future needs, industrial design has become an effective way to break down silos, encourage more lateral

collaboration across the business, and respond smarter and quicker to market changes. Design is now a key strategic business tool as opposed to its traditional place as a ‘nice to have’ that sits outside the core thrust of the business.

So why should you ensure your company is design led? Technology alone will no longer satisfy the increasingly savvy buyer, whether it’s a teenager looking for the latest entertainment device or an industrial buyer purchasing expensive instrumentation. Function and performance are not enough. Technology has to deliver benefits – both real and perceived. A product needs to be attractive, deliver on the brand promise, be delightful to use, and be safe, reliable and easy to dispose of. To deliver these things you need to understand ‘good design’ in all aspects – usability, beauty, inclusive design, cost reduction, design for assembly and design for manufacture.

Beyond this, the stereotype of a ‘typical consumer’ no longer exists. Consumers behave differently depending on the time of day, what they are doing and who they are with. It’s naïve to believe or assume

that people know what they want, other than something that’s better and cheaper than they already have. Working closely with consumers and users as part of their creative processes enables companies to get a unique understanding of customer ‘care abouts’, which are critical to the success of new products and services. There is no doubt that the companies that really pay attention to understanding customer behaviours, future needs and aspirations are going to be the winners.

Designers also provide creative and visualisation skills to help clarify the thinking behind project requirements and to bridge communication gaps between market researchers and consumers, engineering and marketing departments or senior executives and project teams. This, coupled with better customer insights, creates a lower risk and a more confident platform for serious product and service creation and development.

This shift can bring significant benefits to businesses. With organisations frequently structured as silos of knowledge, this new approach breaks down barriers, improves communication and builds well-constructed definitions.

Designing the experience has now become more important than designing the product. Have you adapted your business?

Quadro Design is a division of the Sagentia Group, focused on integrating user experience into the product development process through the power of design. For more information visit www.quadrodesign.com or email Phil@quadrodesign.com

Summer 2013 The Gen 11

© Sagentia June 2013

Sagentia

Sagentia is a global innovation, technology and product

development company. We provide outsourced R&D consultancy

services to start ups through to global market leaders in the medical,

industrial and consumer sectors.

With global headquarters in Cambridge, UK, and US headquarters

in Boston, Massachusetts, Sagentia works with clients from

opportunity discovery through to concept generation and full

product development and transfer to manufacture. We deliver

science and technology innovation and work with clients to develop

next generation products and services that provide commercial

value and market advantage.

Further information can be found at www.sagentia.com

Sagentia Ltd | Harston Mill | Harston | Cambridge | CB22 7GG | UK T. +44 1223 875200

Sagentia Inc | One Beacon Street | Suite 2300 | Boston | MA 02108 | USA T. +1 617 896 0213

Quadro Design Ltd | Harston Mill | Harston | Cambridge | CB22 7GG | UK T. +44 1223 875181

info@sagentia.com www.sagentia.comwww.quadrodesign.com