End-user Need based Creation of a Medical Device: An Experience of Co-design to Struggle Pathological Scars

Scar is a common visible mark of human tissue healing. Sometimes pathological phenomena lead to abnormal hypertrophic or keloid scars, with evolutions varying depending on different conditions: origin of the tissue barrier disruption, concerned body area, or ethnic origin. Based on these statements, care procedures have been developed to avoid aesthetical or functional impairments: drugs injection, surgery, cryotherapy or mechanical compression. The story will relate the matching of a multi-disciplinary team that focused on covering an unmet need for ear lobe keloid treatment, providing patients an optimal and holistic care. The benefits researched lied in improving the understanding of the disorder, avoiding the recidivism of the scars, diminishing the frequency and duration of care, and in end improving patients’ quality of life. The paper will not only narrate the building of a health innovation, on technological, clinical, user points of view, but will also try to detail the evaluations planned at the different stages of development, as well as the challenges, conditions and prerequisites allowing to produce concrete solution.