People with diabetes want to worry less about their medical condition and focus more on living life. Building on the success of their portable Humalog/Humulin insulin pen - the first prefilled "pen" to support single-unit dose resolution—Lilly again partnered with IDEO to design the next generation of easy-to-use, portable, prefilled injection pens. With patentable engineering and user-centered design, such a pen would help the insulin pioneer continue to improve Lilly's insulin pen portfolio.

For an injection pen, user needs are paramount, constraints are unyielding and IP roadblocks plentiful. Giving Lilly a way forward began with inventing a completely new mechanism that could be both smaller and easier to inject than existing products. Using analytical methods to model, understand and iterate the mechanism, and further fine-tuning the design through a series of prototypes, IDEO refined the new pen until size and ease-of-use were optimized. To insure manufacturability at anticipated production rates exceeding millions annually, the team carefully analyzed the more than 100 interactions between the pen's 13 parts so that assembled pens will reliably meet all fit, function, and performance requirements.

The outcome is the "KwikPen," a blue injection pen measuring 5.7 inches long, slightly bigger than a Sharpie marker and shorter than competitive pens. Despite its small size, KwikPen's easy-to-see dose numbers allow for ready dose selection, and injection is designed to occur at a low force. With these advantages, KwikPen may have the potential to improve the lives of people living with diabetes.

KwikPen was launched in the United States in 2008.