How Patient-Centered Design Can Transform Nasal Health

Looking beyond the spray

Cough and cold products are increasingly moving from professional recommendation toward personal choice. This changes what people need from a nasal product. Accurate delivery is still essential, but the experience around it matters too. A product should feel comfortable and intuitive, helping users feel confident that they have chosen an appropriate treatment and used it correctly.

This becomes especially important in over-the-counter and direct-to-consumer settings. A doctor or pharmacist may not be there to recommend a brand, explain the technique, or reassure someone about what to expect. The product itself has a greater role to play. Convenient application, an ergonomic design, and clear feedback that a dose has been delivered can all make self-administration feel more straightforward.

Designing around the user

A good user experience involves much more than technical measures such as plume geometry, actuation force, or dose-volume optimization. Nozzle length, the way the device is actuated, spray sensation, taste, sound, and hand fit can all shape how the product feels in use. Age, strength, and dexterity also matter, so there is no single experience that works equally well for everyone.

Exploratory innovation research by Aptar Pharma, drawing on publicly available social media discussion and external insight into respiratory device use, has highlighted some recurring opportunities. Users may benefit from clearer dose confirmation, easier actuation, more intuitive technique, and a physical design that feels reassuring and trustworthy. These early signals can help development teams focus formal human factors evaluation where it has the greatest potential to improve the experience.

Bringing formulation and delivery together

Nasal product innovation can take many forms. It may involve combining established active ingredients, adapting formulations for different age groups, optimizing concentrations, or changing the delivery system itself. Each choice affects how the product needs to perform.

For example, viscosity, dose volume, concentration, and local tolerability can all influence spray behavior. An antihistamine may work well with one delivery configuration, while a corticosteroid may need another. When active ingredients are combined, formulation and delivery technology must be carefully balanced to achieve the intended performance.

This is why it is valuable to consider the formulation, device, and user experience together from the start. At Aptar Pharma, our drug delivery expertise and formulation development support help customers work through these connections, aligning dose performance, stability, and spray characteristics with the experience they want to create.

Collaboration in practice

Haleon's Otrivin Nasal Spray, enabled by Aptar Pharma's Lateral Control System technology, shows what this collaborative approach can look like. The Otrivin formulations remained unchanged, while the delivery technology was optimized to work with them and support the intended spray performance and consumer experience.

Working together through an iterative development process, the teams refined the product architecture, actuation design, spray characteristics, and overall usability. Side actuation, a shorter nozzle, and a carefully engineered spray profile were developed to support an experience that feels more intuitive and comfortable. The result reflects a wider principle: formulation, delivery, user experience, and scalable manufacturing work best when they are considered as connected parts of the same product.

Turning insight into scalable solutions

Through Noble, Aptar Pharma uses human factors, ergonomics, and user research to understand how people interact with products in everyday settings. Observation, usability testing, and concept evaluation can reveal practical opportunities to improve hand fit, grip, sensory feedback, and ease of use.

The next step is to turn those insights into design requirements. A need for dose confirmation might lead to an audible, tactile, or visual cue. Ease of handling could shape hand fit, surface texture, or actuation. More intuitive technique could influence nozzle geometry or the sequence of use. Ideas can then be tested with intended users and balanced with formulation, performance, regulatory, and manufacturing needs.

By connecting these capabilities early, Aptar Pharma helps customers develop nasal products that are differentiated, technically robust, and ready to scale. The opportunity goes beyond creating a better spray. It is about creating a better experience between the treatment and the person using it.