The Market Shift to In-Home Care: Navigating New Challenges and Opportunities for Medical Devices at Home

Author: Jess Willing-Pichs

The push shows no signs of slowing down. Hospitals are discharging patients faster, payers are looking for cost reductions, and patients themselves are choosing the comfort of their own homes and beds over hospital rooms. The home care market continues to grow, with current estimates valuing the global home medical device market at $43.35 billion in 2024, projected to reach $75.04 billion by 2032. But success requires more than simply repackaging clinical solutions for the living room. 

The Opportunity is Real and Growing 

Several forces are converging to create unprecedented demand for medical devices in the home setting: 

• Resource scarcity: Limited hospital beds and healthcare provider shortages are pushing care outside traditional settings. 
• Patient preference: Given the choice, patients overwhelmingly prefer home care. It's quieter, safer from hospital-acquired infections, and allows for better rest and faster recovery. 
• Access challenges: For patients in rural areas or those managing chronic conditions, traveling hours to a clinic for weekly infusions simply isn't sustainable. 
• Technology categories primed for growth: Infusion pumps, auto-injectors, wound care systems, and home dialysis represent immediate opportunities. 
  
  

Why Clinical Success Doesn't Guarantee Success for Medical Devices at Home 

Here's what many innovators miss: the home is not a mini-hospital. It's a fundamentally different environment with different users, different workflows, different risks, and different success factors for medical devices at home. 

The User Transformation 

In clinical settings, your user is frequently a registered clinician with specialized training and has colleagues nearby for support. At home? Your user might be a 75-year-old patient with arthritis, poor eyesight, high school diploma and no medical training, trying to manage their own IV infusion while their cat jumps on their lap, the kettle is whistling and the TV is on. 

This isn't about planning for outliers. This is a primary use case. 

Environmental Realities That Break Clinical Assumptions 

Power and Placement: Hospital rooms have accessible outlets every few feet. Home outlets hide behind heavy sofas, already occupied by five other plugs, connected through questionable extension cords. Your device's battery life isn't a nice-to-have; it's essential. 

Alarms and Alerts: That piercing low-battery alarm designed to cut through hospital noise? It's now terrifying an elderly patient home alone who doesn't understand what it means or how to respond. 

The Patient Paradox: Here's what surprises many teams: patients at home don't think of themselves as patients. They're parents who need to do laundry and make dinner, professionals taking video calls, people living their lives. They forget they're tethered to medical devices at home. They stand up quickly to answer the door or grab a snack. They navigate stairs, carry groceries, and read stories to grandchildren on their lap. 

For Auto-Injectors: Build Continuous Confidence 

Our recent research across multiple home drug combination device-based studies over the past 24 months has revealed a crucial insight: the biggest barrier for patients isn't the injection itself, it's confidence. Patients second-guess themselves mid-injection. "Am I doing this right?  How long do I hold the device steady for?  Is the device working correctly?  When is it safe to remove it?" 

Traditional solutions (such as pre-discharge patient education and paper-based instruction manuals) fall short because the next injection might be a month later when memories have faded and anxiety has built. 

The Solution:

Design for confidence at every touchpoint. This means: 

• Clear, impossible-to-misinterpret visual and tactile feedback 
• On-device guidance that addresses common mid-injection and post-administration doubts 
• Eco-system support that supplements initial training and maintains confidence between doses 

For Infusion Systems: Prioritize Portability and Simplicity 

Patients receiving home infusions have heightened safety concerns (it's an IV line directly into their vein) but they also want to move freely in their own homes. 

The Solution: 

• Dramatically reduce complexity: one activation button instead of twelve and step by step guided GUIs 
• Pre-program everything possible 
• Low profile carrying solutions (shoulder bags, waist packs) that move naturally with daily activities 
• Extended battery life that supports real-world movement patterns 
• Smaller, inconspicuous devices that do not compromise efficacy or safety 
• Nighttime settings (quieter sound & light arrays) that are conducive to optimal rest 
  
  

Avoiding the Most Common Pitfalls for In-Home Medical Devices 

1. Don't Assume: Map the Journey Never assume what works in one setting translates to another. Map the complete patient journey at home, identifying fears, frustrations, and workarounds at each step. Where are patients getting creative (and potentially dangerous) with your device? 

2. Consider All Users and Their Limitations Your user might be the patient, an elderly spouse, an adult child visiting weekly, or a home health aide. Each has different roles, capabilities, concerns and, latent knowledge gaps. Design for the least capable, most anxious user, not the ideal one. 

3. Address the Confidence Gap Education doesn't end at discharge. Build confidence at each device interaction, through its ecosystem, and through continuous support touch points that acknowledge the reality of memory fade and anxiety build. 

4. Test in Real Homes, Not Lab "Home Environments" That pristine testing room with perfect lighting and convenient outlets? That's not where your device will live. Test in real homes with real constraints and needs: pets, children, mobility and clutter, among others. 

The Path Forward: Start with Understanding 

The companies succeeding with medical devices at home aren't those with the most advanced technology; they're those who deeply understand the home context and design deliberately for it. This requires: 

• Ethnographic research in actual home environments, 
• Journey mapping across all user types and scenarios, 
• Human factors evaluation that reflects home realities, and 
• Iterative testing with real patients in real homes. 

The shift to home care represents one of healthcare's most significant opportunities. But success with medical devices at home requires more than adapting existing solutions. It demands reimagining your device through the lens of where and how it will actually be used. 

The question isn't whether your technology can work at home. It's whether you've designed it to thrive there. 

Ready to explore how your medical device can successfully transition to home care? The Veranex Research & Strategy team specializes in translating clinical innovations into home-ready solutions, leveraging deep ethnographic research and human factors expertise to ensure patients can confidently use your device where it matters most. 

Jess Willing-Pichs is a principal in the Research and Strategy group at Veranex. Our research and strategy experts pinpoint the crucial intersection of User & Stakeholder Desirability, Commercial & Business Viability, and Science & Technology Feasibility. This comprehensive analysis delivers the clarity and actionable intelligence essential for confident a new medical device innovation that truly matters.

¹Business Research Insights. "Home Medical Device Market Report (2024-2032)."