Warwick, United Kingdom
The new TouStar Reusable Pen Injector for Insulin, designed by DCA and manufactured by Sanofi, is the first reusable insulin pen intended for delivery of Toujeo, concentrated basal insulin from Sanofi.
TouStar Reusable Pen Injector for Insulin’s design and sustainable concept recently won a 2022 Green Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
In 2021 Sanofi has launched this innovative product in India, a country in which the International Diabetes Federation estimates that 77 million people live with diabetes.
Given the social and economic impacts of this disease, it is important to help people manage diabetes better, especially in developing economies.
Against this background, TouStar has been developed to improve access to Sanofi’s Toujeo, which is a three-times concentrated basal insulin.
With this concentration, a Toujeo cartridge that is only half the size of a regular one contains 50% more insulin.
Until now, concentrated insulin has only been sold in disposable pen injectors.
This avoids the risk of mixing up concentrated insulin cartridges with regular ones, which might lead to a life-threatening overdose occurring.
TouStar Reusable Pen Injector for Insulin solves this problem through the introduction of an innovative dedicated cartridge system that acts as a lock and key.
This ensures that only cartridges containing Toujeo insulin can be used with the TouStar pen, which is specifically designed for the safe and accurate injection of concentrated insulin.
This clever safety system reduces the complexity of exchanging cartridges and combines with other significant enhancements, such as very low injection force to help set new standards for ease of use.
Not only does TouStar provide an attractive option from a usability perspective, but it also creates an accessible and environmentally responsible alternative to other insulin delivery options.
By leveraging the potential to deliver concentrated insulin with a reusable pen, TouStar reduces the amount of polymer content used per cartridge by about 80% (approximately 20g) compared to an equivalent disposable pen, and by even more when compared with a patient using a regular strength basal insulin.
This translates to significantly lower energy and raw material consumption in manufacture, as well as less clinical waste.
The dedicated cartridges also occupy less than half the space of equivalent disposable pen injectors, meaning that they can be shipped in smaller packages, consuming proportionally less energy in cold-chain transport and storage.
Furthermore, the TouStar device has been designed for local manufacture in India, meaning it can be transported very efficiently to the end-users.
TouStar is an environmentally responsible and affordable insulin delivery option for diabetes patients in India, with no compromises in quality, features, performance, or safety.
TouStar and Toujeo are registered trademarks of Sanofi.
Project: TouStar Reusable Pen Injector for Insulin
Designers: DCA Design International Ltd.
Manufacturer: Sanofi Aventis Deutschland GmbH.
