Healthcare is moving home. From sleep trackers to glucose monitors, patients and caregivers are bringing sophisticated medical devices into their daily lives — but too often, the industry only measures what those devices do, not how they feel to use.

In her recent MedCity News article, Dara St. Louis, EVP at Reach3 Insights, explores the growing importance of capturing the real-world experience of healthcare technology and medical devices. Her message is clear: data logs tell part of the story, but the human context — the emotions, frustrations, and small victories — is what truly drives adherence, satisfaction, and long-term outcomes.

“Devices can send information back to a physician, but that data doesn’t explain how the experience felt. Without that context, healthcare teams miss the very details that shape adherence, satisfaction, and long-term outcomes.”

The overlooked human moments

McKinsey estimates that as much as $265 billion in care could shift from facilities to homes by 2025. Yet while the technology keeps advancing, the patient experience often lags behind.

Dara points out that healthcare brands tend to overlook the “human moments around the technology”—from unboxing a device and decoding instructions to navigating the first alert or error message. These touchpoints, she says, are where trust is built or lost.

She draws an interesting parallel to consumer culture:

“We see this dynamic play out every day on TikTok and YouTube, where unboxing videos rack up millions of views... Healthcare devices may never go viral in the same way, but the principle still applies.”

That first interaction, like opening a new medical device at home, often leaves the strongest impression — and determines whether the product becomes a trusted companion or gets abandoned in a drawer. That's why in-the-moment research is more critical than ever in the medical device and healthcare technology space. 

Capturing the lived experience

To understand what truly happens beyond the clinic, Dara advocates for more immersive, human-centered research methods.

Patients and caregivers can now log their experiences in “modern-day diaries” — short, mobile-first entries captured in real time through apps, text prompts, or online communities. AI-driven conversational tools can probe deeper into emotions and context, revealing not just what happened, but how it felt.

These insights, she argues, are invaluable not just to brands but also to payers and regulators:

“They provide a clearer picture of usability, education gaps, and caregiver burden… helping brands refine support materials, reduce barriers to adherence, and demonstrate real-world value.”

Five ways to redefine medical device research

To keep pace with care’s migration into the home, Dara recommends five shifts in your research strategy:

1. Listen in real time. Capture reactions as they happen — not weeks later.

2. Include caregivers. Many key insights come from those managing the care journey, not the patients themselves.

3. Focus on emotions, not just functions. Use conversational tools to uncover how design choices make users feel.

4. Create ongoing communities. Track how experiences evolve over time to identify persistent barriers.

5. Benchmark and optimize. Compare findings to industry norms to demonstrate clear return on experience.

Why modern research techniques matter

As care continues to move out of hospitals and into homes, the lived experience is becoming the new measure of success. Functionality alone doesn’t guarantee adoption — trust, clarity, and confidence do.

“If we want devices to succeed outside the clinic,” Dara concludes, “we need to start listening inside the home, where trust, confidence, and habits are actually formed.”

For healthcare innovators, that means expanding beyond performance metrics and usage logs to embrace a more human, empathetic approach — one that listens to how patients live with technology, not just how they use it.

For more on this topic, check out our masterclass webinar, Modern Techniques for Health and Pharma.