Disposable Autoinjectors: A New Vision on Key Features

Joël Cotten 

BD Medical – Pharmaceutical Systems
Rue Aristide Berges, FR 38 800 Le Pont de Claix, France
Tel: +33 4 7668 3664    Fax: +33 4 76 683505
Email: joel_cotten@europe.bd.com

Biography

Joël Cotten is a graduate engineer in agro-food industrial processes Enitiaa (Nantes). He holds also
an MBA from Edhec (Lille) with a specialization in Industrial Marketing.

He joined  in 1992 BD Medical - Pharmaceutical Systems (BDM – PS) a unit of BD. BD is a medical devices company based in New Jersey , present on the NYSE ( BDX).  28000 associates work at BD in Medical, Biosciences and Diagnostic fields.
BDM - PS is a worldwide leader of high-quality, clinically proven prefillable parenteral delivery systems. The main products of BDM - PS are prefillable BD Hypak SCFTM syringes as well as BD ReadyfillTM and self injecting system like Pens and Self Injectors

Joël Cotten occupied various positions in Sales and Marketing at BD headquarter of Pont de Claix (France).He is today European Product Manager for the self injection platform and has an extensive knowledge of the self injection market from the end users and manufacturing point of view.

Abstract

For diabetic patients, self-injection is a well known and accepted practice. With the development of other chronic diseases and their associated treatments, self-injection is becoming an increasingly accepted practice in other therapeutic domains such as short stature (HGH), fertility (FSH), hepatitis (Interferon α), multiple sclerosis (Interferon β), emergency treatments (epinephrine, imigran), antidotes in the military context (against organophosphorus nerve agents) and Parkinson’s disorder (apomorphin).

In 2008 more than 1.2 billion cartridges or prefilled syringes will be used by patients with a pen or an autoinjector to self-inject their treatments, and this number is forecast to continue growing in the coming years as both the patient pool continues to increase and the number of available treatments grows.

In this paper we discuss the trends related to the various systems and devices used by patients to perform their injections and observe the increasing demand for disposable devices like pens in general and autoinjectors in particular.

The market for autoinjectors is booming and is projected to continue growing at a double-digit rate over the next 10 years.

We have found it very useful to focus on this new demand and to understand from the patient’s point of view the importance of the various features that could be incorporated into the design and manufacture of autoinjectors.

We present below an overview of a recent quantitative market survey conducted among 200 patients. This survey was designed to help us rank the different features of autoinjectors and their respective value to patients. We also used an extended arm of this market research to collect end-user feedback on our recently developed disposable autoinjector BD Physioject™, thereby assessing patients’ acceptance and preference when compared to devices already on the market.