Hospira

In the News:

Hospira’s Symbiq™ Infusion System wins the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's 2006 User-Centered Product Design Award.
(Direct Download)

Hospira’s Symbiq™ Infusion System wins a 2007 Medical Device Excellence Award (MDEA) from the Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry.

The Challenge:Re-invent the design of an infusion pump to be easier to set up, manage, and oversee patient care while preventing medication delivery errors.

The Approach:

• Conduct in-depth interviews with nurse users to identify unmet needs and current problems faced with setting-up infusion pumps.
• Perform a comparative heuristic assessment of existing infusion pumps available on the market to discover what worked and what didn’t.
• Brainstorm and ideate on new pump designs with key stakeholders.
• Create low fidelity prototypes for the new pump and rapidly iterate it through running a series of think-aloud usability studies.
• Conduct a large-scale nurse usability test with beta-ready hardware and software in a hospital setting.
• Document the new pump functionality with design specifications used by the Hospira development teams.

The Result:An award-winning touchscreen infusion pump system that was the first of its kind to hit the market and is frequently referenced by Hospira as an example of being a successful research and design-influenced product.

Services: Human factors, User research, Usability testing, Risk analysis, Focus groups, Graphic design, Interaction design, Interactive simulations