Hi all!

[Laurent]

Hi all!

My name is Laurent. I am 24, from France, but I currently study in Bedfordshire, UK. English is not my mother tongue, please excuse me if what I write is sometimes a bit awkward

I am currently studying a master of industrial design. For my thesis project, I am developing (for/with an ophthalmologist) an innovative medical device to treat MGD. This is a real world project that will lead to the release to market of an actual product in the near future.

A good understanding of patient's lifestyle is necessary to design products that are appropriate, efficient and easy to use. As people well aware of dry eye condition and products currently available on the market, your opinion is very valuable.

If you don't mind, I will come up soon with a web survey to collect your experience with dry eyes and insights. It shouldn't take long to fill in, probably less than 5 minutes, and will be anonymous.
Would you like to take part in that survey?

If you have any suggestion, question or random thought, please do not hesitate!

Thanks!

[littlemermaid]

Hi Laurent, Can you give us information about your ophthalmologist? and the research affiliation (medical technology company, hospital, university, independent)? You need to ask Rebecca for guidance on how to do this Forum-Policy-(for-eyecare-amp-industry-professionals)

[bakunin]

I would like to see a device (glasses) that keep my eyelids warm all the time, like a continous warm compress...

[Rebecca Petris]

I've exchanged emails with Laurent.

Quite happy to have any questionnaires posted here for research (most of my content sensitivity on this board relates to using the board to promote things) - it's one way all of us dry eye folks can feel that we have a voice in things being developed out there, and I like knowing that they want to ask us. I think I probably need to put something in the policy to clarify this.

[Laurent]

Thank you for your replies and your support!

As requested, some more information...
I am affiliated to uni, the questions were reviewed and approved by the university's ethics committee. Now I have to cast that in a web-questionnaire and make sure everything works properly before submitting it to you. The project is actually my Master Thesis, and the ophthalmologist is the industrial sponsor for the project. He is specialized in front‐of‐eye diseases (which includes eyelids, cornea, cataracts, etc). He is very involved in the project and enabled me to meet some of his patients to carry out interviews.
The statistics resulting from the (anonymous) data collected might be used for a journal publication (I will summarize all the details later).

The different steps of the projects are:
1. Background research on dry eyes, regulations on medical devices, state of art
2. User/patient research (offline and online <- that's where we are!)
3. Set product requirements
4. Idea generation
5. Prototyping
6. Testing that the product meets requirements (clinical trials are not included in the scope of my thesis)