10th January 2011 – Oval Medical Technologies Ltd., the Cambridge based autoinjector company today announced results from two user studies in which Oval’s novel, proprietary autoinjector clearly demonstrated superiority compared with two well-known autoinjector devices currently on the market.

The Oval next generation autoinjector is designed to be smaller, easier and safer to use than any other device currently available, and is applicable to a greater range of drugs.

The first study recruited 30 participants, all of whom had very limited experience of autoinjectors and other injectable devices. Participants were presented with three training devices (Oval Medical’s, MyClic and Humira) and were asked to demonstrate their usage and then to rank all three in order of preference.</p>

Twenty-nine out of the thirty participants (97%), preferred Oval Medical’s device and said they would choose it in practice. Twenty-nine participants also found Oval’s device the simplest to use. The participants commented on Oval’s device being smaller and having fewer steps to operate as well as being less intimidating and threatening in terms of appearance.

In addition, the study participants took far less time to complete the process of self-injection when using Oval’s device, which took on average a total of two minutes and 51 seconds. The competitor devices totalled over four minutes (MyClic) and six minutes (Humira).

A second user study was held in Loughborough involving patients, their carer’s and healthcare providers. This study followed the same procedures as the Cambridge University study and recruited twenty-four participants, eighteen of whom were naive potential users and the remaining six of whom were nurses. When the participants were asked which device they would prefer to use on a weekly basis, 20 participants (83%) said they would rather use Oval’s autoinjector compared with the other two devices, and all 24 participants reported that Oval’s device was easy to actuate at their preferred injection point.

Overall, Oval’s device scored better than both competitor devices on all seven attributes that were tested by the potential patient users and all nine attributes evaluated by the sample of nurses. Participants found that the device was a comfortable size to hold, it was clear when the dose had been given, and also it was easy to use correctly.

Matthew Young, CEO of Oval, said: “We are delighted to announce the results of these two user studies which show clearly that our autoinjector appeals to patients and is easy for them to use. Our proprietary autoinjector technology has a number of technical benefits in terms of low drug contamination, high fill volumes and the capacity to be applied to a wide range of products. These studies show that through world-class design we have combined these with features that will make life easier for patients as well.”