New IndPress
Bangalore, Jun 23: Do you spend long hours at work, gorge on fast-food and barely find time to exercise? Then you’re highly likely to join the ranks of millions of Type 2 diabetics world over, warns diabetes care leader Novo Nordisk’s Innovation Manager Arne Stjernholm Madsen.
Speaking to the this website’s newspaper on the sidelines of the recent ‘India Innovation Summit 2006’, a CII initiative, Madsen said that highly-stressed working professionals with unhealthy food habits, were “more prone to Type 2 diabetes than most others.”
“Excessive intake of high-calorie food coupled with lack of exercise can spell disaster for young people,” he said. Obese people, according to Madsen, “run a high risk of getting diabetes. Although obesity isn’t a widespread malaise in India, rapid lifestyle changes, especially in the metros has increased the risk of affliction.”
Diabetes care companies need to keep in mind these lifestyle changes while creating new insulin delivery mechanisms, he opined. “Technology-centric innovation is becoming obsolete. Innovation in diabetes research has to focus on consumer needs,” he said.
Madsen cited the examples of the insulin pen and the portable blood glucose monitor, two revolutionary products introduced in recent years, as results of such user-centric innovation.
The pen-like device enables insulin delivery by helping patients inject it into their bodies, through an attached needle, by merely pressing a button. The portable blood glucose monitor helps patients measure blood glucose levels by placing a drop of blood on a test strip, instead of making a trip to a laboratory. Both devices are a boon for diabetics who are constantly on the move.
Making a case for “empathic design”, i.e., interpreting consumers’ need with empathy, Madsen affirmed that the future of diabetes care lay in innovative devices like “a tactile alarm that vibrates and rings simultaneously to alert a sleeping diabetic when his blood sugar levels drop.”
In developing countries like India, affordable insulin delivery products which are easy to distribute and don’t require constant refrigeration are the need of the hour, he said.