Considerations for the design and development of connected inhalation systems

With the increasing prevalence and use of digital technologies applied to drug delivery devices and software solutions to support inhaled therapeutics, there are multiple considerations that patients, healthcare professionals, payors and pharmaceutical manufacturers can and should observe. Key considerations include identifying the stakeholders required, value to deliver to each stakeholder, system design and the laws and regulations with which the system must comply.

A diagram illustrates the complex digital ecosystem in which a connected inhalation system must exist. The patient is the primary user of the connected devices but is only the starting point. The data generated by those devices often move to a cloud platform to perform a variety of actions. These include analytics, interfacing with electronic health record (EHR) systems, and providing insights back to patients in an app or portal, as well as to their healthcare team in a healthcare provider (HCP) app or portal, if not directly integrated into an electronic health record.