A device is the product. Its companion app is the relationship.
A global medical device manufacturer wanted a mobile app to be a companion to their enteral feeding devices — present in patients' and caregivers' daily lives in a way the devices alone could not be. MWE's Digital Empathy framework shaped the engagement from discovery through launch, and kept surfacing what the platform needed to become next.
Overview
Most of a patient's experience happens between appointments. Until now, none of it was captured.
Enteral feeding patients carry a significant care burden at home. Feeds need to be scheduled and tracked. Symptoms monitored. Medications managed. For the caregivers who support them, the load is equally real. Much of what they deal with daily is clinically significant, and almost none of it is visible to the care team between visits.
The client came to MWE with a clear brief: a HIPAA-compliant mobile companion app to help patients and caregivers manage that daily routine. Discovery included focus groups with patients and caregivers — understanding how they actually managed their care, where the friction was, and what they most needed support with. That research shaped what was built. MWE's Digital Empathy framework kept surfacing new questions at every stage that followed.
The Challenge
A demanding daily routine, managed largely without support.
For enteral feeding patients and their caregivers, home care is ongoing, detail-intensive work. What happens in the white space between clinic visits — how feeds are going, what symptoms arise, how the patient is progressing — is exactly what the care team needs to know, and exactly what tends to get lost.
- Patients and caregivers had no structured way to track feeds, symptoms, or clinical observations over time. Significant data was generated every day and immediately lost.
- Provider appointments meant reconstructing weeks of daily experience from memory or scattered notes — in a visit too short to do it well.
- When multiple caregivers were involved, there was no shared record and no way to communicate observations to the care team.
- The manufacturer had no direct channel to reach patients and caregivers after discharge — for education, support, or the questions that inevitably arise between visits.
The Approach — Digital Empathy
The framework that defined what this platform needed to be.
MWE applied its clinically validated Digital Empathy framework to define the app's scope — not as a feature list, but as an answer to three questions a good clinician asks in every patient encounter: am I listening to what this person is experiencing, do I understand what it means, and am I helping them act on it? Applied to software, those questions shaped every design and product decision made on this engagement.
An app listens when it ingests data on what's happening in a patient's daily life. Before this platform existed, patients were tracking feeds, symptoms, and medications with paper and pen — or not at all. The first question the DE framework asked was how to capture that data in a structured, usable form. The answer was a full patient-generated health data layer: feeding logs, clinical observations, medications, and reminders. The platform also listens through one of the client's devices directly, connecting to the manufacturer's enteral feeding pump via Bluetooth to receive feed data automatically — no manual entry required. Patients managing the broader range of the manufacturer's enteral feeding products have a single place to track everything.
Connected Device Integration
When the device and the app speak the same language.
One of the most demanding parts of building a companion app for a medical device manufacturer is connecting the app directly to the device — receiving real data, in real time, from hardware in the patient's home. MWE built that integration for this platform using Bluetooth Low Energy, extending the listen layer from manual entry to automated device capture.
Bluetooth Low Energy Integration
The pump logs what it delivers. The app receives it.
When the manufacturer's enteral feeding pump delivers a feed, the app receives that data automatically over BLE — date, time, volume, rate, and method — and logs it without any action required from the patient or caregiver. Real-time pump status, alerts, and battery level are displayed in the app. Firmware updates are delivered over the air. A full audit log of device events is maintained for regulatory traceability.
Why this matters
Manual logging puts the burden on patients and caregivers who already have enough to manage. When the device does the logging, the data is more complete, more accurate, and captured without adding to the care burden. It also means the care team sees what actually happened — not what the patient remembered to record.
Key Capabilities
What the platform does
Feeding log & clinical tracking
Structured logs for feeds, stoma condition, stool, urine, nausea, and weight — with daily goals, reminders, and the ability to attach notes and images. Entries from the connected pump are logged automatically.
Health dashboard & AI patient summary
Visual trend summaries across all tracked metrics, with adjustable date ranges. An AI-generated report synthesizes that data into a plain-language summary the patient can share at a provider appointment.
Medication management & reminders
Medication schedules with push notification reminders and completion tracking. Recurring event reminders configurable by the patient or caregiver — structure for a daily routine that has a lot of moving parts.
Education hub & care team messaging
CMS-managed educational content updated by the manufacturer, with search and topic filtering. Secure direct messaging to the care team — a channel for the questions that arise between visits.
Bluetooth pump integration
Direct BLE connection to the manufacturer's enteral feeding pump. Feed data is logged automatically from device output, with real-time status and alerts displayed in the app, over-the-air firmware updates, and a full audit trail built to FDA cybersecurity guidance standards.
HIPAA-compliant infrastructure & global-ready architecture
Hosted on MWE's HIPAA-compliant cloud with MWE Auth for identity management, 2FA, and biometric login — compliance coverage extending to the Bluetooth data path. Built for global expansion: compliant with regulatory frameworks across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, with localization infrastructure in place for new markets without a platform rebuild.
Who This Is For
Device manufacturers whose patients go home and keep managing.
Every medical device manufacturer can put a product in a patient's hands. What happens after that — how patients and caregivers manage at home, what questions arise, how they feel about the company whose devices they depend on — is largely beyond reach once they leave the clinic. A medical device companion app changes that relationship.
There is clinical value in the change: better data, better-prepared provider visits, patients who understand their own condition more clearly. There is also something harder to quantify. Patients who feel genuinely supported by the company behind their device don't just use it — they trust it. A well-built companion app is one of the few things a device manufacturer can do that compounds over time in a patient's life, long after the initial device decision was made.
Fits if
You manufacture a device patients use at home and the support they receive after discharge doesn't match the complexity of what they're managing. Or if you're bringing a connected device to market and want a companion app built to the same clinical and regulatory standard — present in a patient's daily life in a way the device alone cannot be.
Tell us what
you're working on.
Most good projects start with a conversation. If you have materials — requirements, diagrams, vendor documents, notes — send them over. We'll review them before we talk.