Real-time 3D surgery visualisation with Cydar

With the goal of improving patient experience, we went into the operating theatre with Cydar. After observing and conducting research, we delivered a design system for a user interface that enhanced their visualisation capabilities for endovascular surgery.

Cydar are a leading provider of cloud-based services that fuse images of patient data with live, x-ray images to provide real-time 3D visualisations of endovascular systems. Using their services reduces radiation risks and patient exposure to chemicals. It also enhances surgical workflow, dramatically improving patient outcomes. After getting feedback from medical professionals who use their system in operating theatres, Cydar acknowledged that they needed to deploy significant usability and user experience improvements. They asked Foolproof to work with them to understand the opportunities.

To get close enough see the context-of-use through the eyes of practitioners, we had to learn the vocabulary of surgery in this field. We also got inside the operating theatre to observe the workflows of surgical teams during surgery.

Through these observation sessions and interviews with surgeons, radiographers, and support staff, we leveraged user-centred principles to design, test and iterate improvements to the interface and visualisation system.

Initial stakeholder workshops at Cydar’s Cambridgeshire HQ enabled us to understand the business context and agree the goals for design. It was also our introduction to the unique complexity of the system and users' context. To evaluate their current experience and gather critical insights, we conducted a series of interviews with surgeons already using the system in two UK hospitals. Quickly, it became clear that the surgical users had a very low tolerance for unnecessary ‘clutter’ and non-critical functionality. They also had clear opinions on what they needed from the system to help them make better decisions. In these interviews and in subsequent testing, it was very important that we spoke to the participants using the language of their practice. While a steep learning curve for our researchers and designers, it established a level of trust with the surgical staff that was invaluable. It also facilitated a much deeper level of understanding.

To understand how surgeons interacted with the system during an operation, the most revealing research was conducted during live surgery. The learnings from these sessions provided fundamental, environmental and behavioural insights that had a significant impact on the design. These types of in-depth insights could not have be gained through interviews alone.

The proof of the project’s success lies in the adoption of the Cydar EV product by our customers into routine clinical use.

Tom Carrell — CEO, Cydar

Since this project was completed, we have continued to support Cydar with other elements of their product range. This support includes further refining of the experiences that surgeons have when using Cydar’s range of surgical tools.