The Shift Toward Patient-Centric Drug Delivery Systems

Chapter of the 2025 Global Drug Delivery System Trends Report

4 minute read

Drug delivery systems (DDS) are becoming increasingly patient-centric as digital solutions evolve. Sustained engagement requires not only embedding these devices within broader digital health ecosystems but also designing them around the needs of their end users: patients and caregivers.

This article explores how drug delivery systems are evolving toward greater patient-centricity, driven by the need for higher usability and patient empowerment. It also examines how companies can align their commercial strategies with patient needs through co-design, usability engineering, and patient journey insights.

Key Drivers: Usability, Patient Empowerment, and Engagement Needs

Multiple forces are pushing DDS toward greater patient centricity, making devices more intuitive, clinically relevant, and empowering. These forces include:

High usability and intuitive design: Devices that are easy to use and centered around the patient are critical for maintaining high engagement and long-term adoption. Poor usability, characterized by complex interfaces, burdensome data entry, or multi-step, time-consuming processes, remains a leading cause of disengagement.
Perceived usefulness and clinical relevance: Patients are more likely to remain engaged when DDS deliver clear value, such as actionable insights, better disease management, or improved outcomes. Clinical evidence generated from collected data strengthens trust in the system, supports continued use, and helps reduce dropout.
Rising expectations for engagement and empowerment: Modern patients expect more than passive monitoring; they seek active engagement through personalized feedback, bidirectional communication, and seamless integration with other health tools. DDS must support self-management and shared decision-making to meet these expectations.
Shift toward home-based care: The trend toward outpatient and home-based care is empowering patients to take greater control of their treatments. DDS technologies must adapt by enabling safe, effective, and convenient self-administration outside clinical settings.

Dropout rates for DDS, particularly digital solutions, still range from 35% to 65% despite these drivers. The challenges include limited perceived value, high user effort, and lack of meaningful interaction. Addressing these barriers requires patient-centric designs grounded in three principles: usability (ease of use), usefulness (clinical benefit), and utility (system-wide value).

Usability, patient preference, and low complaint rates are major drivers, not just for patient satisfaction, but also for manufacturers looking to control costs.

Markus Puusepp, Chief Growth Officer

Strategic Decision: How to Align Commercial Strategy With Patient Needs

Companies aiming to develop a successful commercial strategy aligned with patient requirements need to embrace co-creation and co-design with patients at every stage of the DDS lifecycle.

Companies in the early R&D phase should take a systematic and interdisciplinary approach to gain a deep understanding of patients’ needs and preferences, while identifying challenges and opportunities. Companies can create impactful digital and physical solutions by applying design thinking principles to address key pain points in utility, usability, desirability, and strategy. This approach positions patients and other stakeholders as active decision-makers, ensuring that unmet needs directly inform product and service design.

Design research should be complemented by usability engineering, conducted in line with international standards and regional regulations. This process generates objective data demonstrating the safety and efficacy of DDS, mitigating risks caused by human factors. It is essential not only for regulatory approval but also to improve user experience, patient preference, and long-term retention.

Companies can build engagement and retention strategies in the later development stages using insights from in-depth patient journey analyses. These strategies can be tailored to address key pain points, driving higher retention and maximizing adoption of digital solutions. Systematic identification of behaviors to modify, maintain, or develop ensures that engagement approaches directly target patient needs, reducing dropout rates, and sustaining adherence.

As the industry continues to advance toward more patient-centric design, there is a growing need to accelerate the journey from concept to clinic, enabling safer and more effective bioresorbable therapies for patients. In this context, biomaterials represent an opportunity to create delivery platforms that minimize intervention, enhance comfort, and improve the overall patient experience.

Marc Hendriks, Vice President of Corporate Development

As the delivery of healthcare continues to transition from formal HC settings to the home, user-centricity and the ability to successfully self-administer medications becomes more and more critical. At the same time, formulations are becoming more complex as drug developers struggle to co-formulate and achieve liquid stable formulations. To serve this need, we will see the rise in prevalence of those Dual Chamber Systems that allow drug constituents to be kept separate during storage in one container and then administered simply with dose accuracy and safety.

John A. Merhige Chief Commercial Officer

We actively support clients with device design that merges digital interfaces and human factors engineering, particularly as treatment shifts from hospital to home. Our goal is to create intuitive, foolproof user experiences that reduce the need for skilled oversight and ensure safe self-administration.

Robert Segura, Chief Development Officer

Another example of patient-centric design in practice comes from Terumo, a leading developer and manufacturer of medical devices with always patient comfort and treatment accuracy in mind. Its recently introduced Injection Filter Needle illustrates how application-centric considerations are being embedded directly into device engineering:

Patient-protection-first design: An embedded 5 μm mesh filter reduces the risk of particulate contamination, critical in sensitive procedures such as intravitreal injections, where complications can lead to vision loss.
Enhanced patient comfort: Terumo’s K-Pack II needles with a 30G extra-thin wall cannula show lowering of injection force at a significant level – targeting to increase user and patient comfort – acknowledging present risks such as subconjunctival hemorrhage.
Precision and reliability: Threaded hubs and aseptic blister packaging are design examples with the target to enable consistent and efficient administration, particularly with prefilled syringes.

Terumo’s approach shows how device innovation is moving beyond pure functionality toward patient-centric outcomes, aligning with broader industry trends focused on minimizing complications, enhancing usability, and supporting long-term adherence in sensitive treatment areas.