Widespread adoption is one of the greatest challenges of marketing a new medical device. Once you’ve overcome the various hurdles characteristic of the medical device development process – FDA application submission and approval, clinical trials, patent applications, coding and reimbursement – you have to consider how to convince doctors to adopt the technology.
There are many issues to get in the way. Doctors adopt medical devices but they must accept and implement them first. The question is, how can you solve for this?
What is Augmented Reality and Why Will Doctors Love It?
Augmented reality is how you can provide the ultimate experience to customers who would benefit from your technology. It’s a huge selling point that will drive adoption and implementation of medical devices.
Gone are the days of telling a doctor that you’ll have to send a technician to fix or demonstrate a repair in person. You won’t have to set up a complicated video system that limits understanding on both ends. Remote assistance software with augmented reality features enable instant interactive expertise by merging two real-time video streams.
Augmented reality takes advantage of mobile devices many medical professionals already have on hand and provides a virtual “side-by-side” experience through the use of gestures and nonverbal cues. Help Lightning can also play an important role in the growing need for remote patient care.
Help Lightning’s remote visual assistance software provides these benefits, but there’s more to the story regarding why we’re passionate about improving medical including telehealth technology adoption.
Immediate Visual Assistance for Medical Device Training and Real Time Troubleshooting
Help Lightning was founded by Dr. Bart Guthrie, a prominent neurosurgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Because of this, the company has always been built around the needs of physicians and medical device technology companies.
Dr. Guthrie founded Help Lightning out of necessity. He needed a way to facilitate better communication and get rid of common headaches in the practice of medicine.
Augmented reality helped him in various clinical situations – consulting on cases, preparing support staff, collaborating with other physicians, and meeting with patients. The goal was an immediate telepresence, regardless of geographic location.
Remote visual assistance software does exactly that. It’s an innovative solution to the challenges of providing immediate help to device users who navigate complex technical issues on a daily basis.
BD Case Study: Help Doctors Adopt Medical Devices
We’ve seen augmented reality work for medical device customer support in our partnership with healthcare technology company, BD. They were looking for a system that could help doctors get their diagnostic instruments up and running as efficiently as possible. For these users, there’s a lot more riding on the technology than just productivity. Often, lives are at stake if medical devices don’t work as expected.
The benefits start right at the beginning of your relationship with a doctor. Why would they switch from their tried-and-true device to something new that may require a steep learning curve? Even if they could achieve better outcomes, that might require them to develop a new competency or put in many hours of additional work.
In today’s medical work environment, where there is increasing strain on doctors to spend excess unpaid time filling out paperwork, they’ll be hesitant to add anything else to their plate.
BD found they could often bypass this concern by encouraging users to rely on Help Lightning’s augmented reality features. Since their technology deals with human samples, BD’s users needed near-perfect efficiency and uptime. With remote visual assistance, they’ve been able to offer this level of service and sophistication to doctors.
Tips for Using Remote Visual Assistance Technology
Here’s a great example of how Help Lightning’s augmented reality features changes the game. One of our Help Lightning customers shared a story of a medical procedure that had gone off the rails. The surgeon brought the device manufacturer into the surgical suite virtually using Help Lightning. Within a few minutes, the problem had been resolved and a life-threatening situation was avoided.
If your medical device would be complicated for a new user to operate, requires regular calibration, or can result in dire consequences if inoperative, a high level of customer support is necessary. Therefore, the key is an improved ability to demonstrate rather than just describe how to resolve a problem.
Help Doctors Adopt Medical Devices Using Augmented Reality
When you reach out to a particular medical practice, hospital, or individual doctor, let them know upfront that you offer remote support, bolstered by augmented reality. They’ll be more likely to consider adopting the technology if they know they can seamlessly integrate remote assistance with their education efforts. Plus, they’ll be able to do this in a way that best fits into their busy schedule.
Remote visual assistance incorporates directly into the doctor’s workflow. As a result, doctors can achieve greater satisfaction with your medical device customer support while they improve patient outcomes.
Curious how to implement augmented reality features into your sales, support, and service teams? Learn more about how Help Lightning services can help doctors adopt medical devices. Request a free demo or download the BD case study.
