A blood potassium self-test for better kidney care

ClientKalium Health

Monitor

Self-test diagnostics

A self-test system for monitoring blood potassium levels

Kalium Health is leading a patient-focused approach to improve kidney disease management - a significant issue costing US Medicare $2 billion weekly. Kalium Health's first product is a blood potassium self-test, which is crucial for managing a major risk and cost in kidney disease treatment. The team has developed effective blood sensing technology, established a clear regulatory path, and planned a targeted approach to enter the market. Their ultimate goal is to improve the standard of care for millions of patients.

Services

Knowledge and user journey mapping
Ideation session facilitation
Brand language discovery
Concept design
User interface development
Industrial design and carry case development

User journey mapping

The user journey was mapped out to identify pain-points and design opportunities to feed into targeted ideation sessions.

Portable carry case for the Kalium Health monitor — Portable carry case

Market research analysis for the Kalium Health monitor — Market research analysis

Visual language boards for Kalium Health

Brand language discovery

I facilitated a brand language discovery exercise to uncover the needs of users and define a brand promise. The brand promise was translated into brand attributes to communicate through the design language and user experience.

Digital interface development for the Kalium Health monitor

User interface development

The Kalium Health monitor's digital interface was developed in parallel with the industrial design. The development focussed on reducing user error by providing digital feedback on correct strip insertion.

Three-quarter view of the Kalium Health monitor

Industrial design development

The industrial design was refined into an approachable form with an intuitive workflow and a portable carry case, creating an integrated system that simplifies the self-testing experience for patients.

From our initial brief, Pathway helped us develop a product design that we are excited about and that users loved in user evaluation studies. The project encompassed hardware design, user interface development and branding, and the Pathway team did well to ensure a great user experience while still meeting the requirements and constraints of a medical product. Pathway carried out concept visualisation, detailed design and prototype production, liaising with independent human factors experts to plan and execute formative user evaluation with great results. One highlight was the brand language that Pathway developed for us. They did well to collate and condense a range of different ideas from across our team and were not afraid to challenge our preconceptions, giving a result that we are proud to call our own.
Tom Collings, CEO, Kalium Health