Toward a new age of patient centricity? The application of eye-tracking to the development of connected self-injection systems

ABSTRACT

Background: Increasing interest in digitally enhanced drug delivery tools urges both industry and academia to rethink current approaches to product usability testing. This article introduces mobile eye-tracking, generating detailed contextual data about user engagement with connected self-injection systems as a new methodological approach to formative usability assessment.

Methods: A longitudinal case study with a total of 35 injection-naïve participants was conducted. In three consecutive experiments, eye-tracking was applied to formative usability testing of a novel connected self-injection device. Three eye-tracking derived usability indicators were established to assess product effectiveness, efficiency, and ease of use.

Results: Analysis of the data revealed events of user hesitation, process interruption and unintended action, and these occurrences could either be completely eliminated or significantly reduced throughout the process (product effectiveness). At the same time, the overall use duration decreased from 86.1 to 58.7 sec (product efficiency). Analysis revealed that product modifications successfully guided user attention to those interface elements most relevant during each task, thereby improving product ease-of-use.

Conclusions: The step-wise improvement in the usability indicators demonstrates that iteratively applying eye-tracking methods effectively supports the user-centered design of connected self-injection systems. The results highlight how eye-tracking can be employed to gain an in-depth understanding of patient engagement with novel healthcare technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Connected drug delivery
• eye-tracking
• smart devices
• formative usability
• patient centricity
• self-injection devices
• digital health

Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to all participants of the eye-tracking study. Furthermore, we thank Daniela Hagmann for her valuable research assistance. We also thank Philipp Richard, Thomas Weinhold, and Ian Thompson for their feedback on earlier drafts of the document.

Author contributions

A Schneider, C Jordi, and Q Lohmeyer conceived and planned the experiments. Q Lohmeyer carried out the experiments and analyzed the data. J Lange aided in interpreting the results. A Schneider, C Jordi, J Lange and Q Lohmeyer wrote the manuscript in consultation with M Meboldt.

Declaration of interest

A Schneider, C Jordi and J Lange are employed by Ypsomed AG. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The authors were supported by ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland) and Ypsomed AG (Burgdorf, Switzerland).