Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are essential to sustainable business cultures, nowhere more so than in the MedTech industry, where a product’s success can depend on its acceptance within a variety of communities.

In Episode #30, KeyTech’s Andy Rogers and Senior Mechanical Engineer Danica Mackesey sat down with Sarah Hassaine, ResMed’s Head of Global Inclusion and Diversity, about fostering environments where multiple voices get heard.

Need to know

Changing lives globally —ResMed is a global manufacturer of CPAP systems for at-home sleep apnea treatment and ventilator solutions for out-of-hospital care settings.

Diversity as a strategy — Hassaine’s team coordinates ResMed’s efforts to bring diversity and inclusivity to the employee experience, business practices, and product development.

Giving ResMed communities a voice — ResMed employees participate in Employee Resource Groups where women, veterans, neurodiverse, and other communities contribute their perspectives to the company’s D&I strategies.

The nitty-gritty

A large part of Hassaine’s role is fostering D&I within ResMed — quite a challenge, considering the company has over ten thousand team members supporting customers in over 140 countries! At the same time, the core challenges will be familiar to small companies and startups.

“The first part is for people to understand themselves,” she explains. “People have their own intrinsic opinions, thoughts, biases…. Building in that ability to understand and find value in people’s differences is the hardest part.”

Diversity and inclusivity also need to be part of the product development cycle. “Some communities are not comfortable talking about sleep,” Hassaine says. “It is a very personal experience. We have seen that struggle with getting some communities to even get sleep-tested.”

People from disparate communities — Women, people of color, veterans, older people — have differing attitudes towards doctors, the healthcare system, and personal health in general. These differences, however, are not well understood.

“Our medical affairs team is doing more research on the social determinants of health and access to health care. We're making sure that everyone gets access to a sleep test if needed.”

Data that made the difference

ResMed’s D&I team collects qualitative and quantitative data to understand the state of diversity and inclusion within the company. In addition to surfacing perspectives through Employee Resource Groups, her team generates quantitative insights from hiring, promotion, and attrition data as well as from employee surveys.

“It does take time, especially in the inclusion space, to address data and see improvement,” Hassaine says. “I’m finally now having a story to tell three years later.”

Hassaine and Danica addressed how diversity data plays is crucial in medical device development. Danica brought up the “importance of understanding who’s going to use the device because there’s some really potentially dangerous impacts.”

“We're really taking that into consideration,” Hassaine agreed. The success of sleep apnea treatments often depends on the fit of a CPAC system’s mask. A key question Hassaine brought to ResMed’s product teams: “Are we making sure we have enough diversity to test our products so that we're… accommodating all face types or all heights or all body types?”