Having been early in the field of home health monitoring, Honeywell products lack the glamour of some manufacturers’ newer offerings. However, with a user-base of over 420,000, they have some extremely good usability data which has been fed back into the product development. “After the first 10,000 users you start to see where the problems are, and can start to design them out” said the representative. An example is the blood pressure monitoring cuff, which is now specially tapered to accommodate the physiology of the arms of older people and can be slipped on with one hand. Another is that the machine switches itself on at the same time each day, enabling more accurate assessment of changes over time.
Honeywell is working on kit with a greater level of user-clinician interactivity, to be launched later this year.
In a care establishment, only one set of kit is required and each resident is recognised via his or her swipe card.