Carotid Stenotic Scan
Research / Industrial Design / Human Factors / Engineering
CVR Medical is a med-tech start-up dedicated to the development and advancement of revolutionary technology to be used to assess a patient’s carotid arterial health. We worked with CVR to conduct research, prioritize user needs with contextual learning, and create a mobile diagnostic platform to bring its technology to market.
Getting a medical device to market is no small task, even with plenty of time, money, and resources at your disposal. For start-ups, this can be an exponentially daunting task and efforts to cut corners often result in missteps and costly iteration. Working with the CVR team, we conducted a series of working sessions to outline the company’s strategy and identify gaps in critical elements of commercialization in order to help prioritize activities with the available capital.
Current tools and tests are time consuming, expensive, and require multiple visits to a healthcare provider. Administered during routine testing at your primary care physician, this technology quickly makes a connection between fluid flow and sub-sonic frequencies to determine the presence of arterial disease or blockages.
Administering this diagnostic test is relatively simple with the entire process taking only several minutes. Our focus was on humanizing the technology to ease patient anxiety, simplify the workflow for clinical staff, and accommodate system-level components (modality, charging, disposables, storage, etc.) for a small exam room.
Multiple concepts were explored early to determine the optimized system architecture that provided the best platform for a simplified workflow and compact design, that would be cost effective to manufacture. Iterative, scaled rapid prototypes were created to assess viability of concepts and compare them to anthropometric data of potential users as well as architectural drawings of typical provider clinics. Once a path was selected, cost-effective white foam models were created to assess usability of the modality, docking and charging, and maneuverability. Overall aesthetics, form, and proportion were also assessed at this stage.
Using a combination of an off the shelf Arduino, a lipo charging circuit, and an induction charging circuit, in combination with a custom Tekna designed daughter board, the Advanced Development team built a working proof of concept quickly and efficiently using our custom in house CNC router. The functional prototype was instrumental in early customer feedback, package feasibility studies, and continued startup funding rounds.
A functional prototype of the CSS diagnostic tool was delivered to the Consumer Electronics Show and on display with other new technologies demonstrating the benefits of wireless charging.
