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Structured assessment of innovative surgical technologies early in the design phase

Boek - Dissertatie

The design and development of surgical technologies takes time and substantial resources. Before reaching the market, these innovative technologies must first prove to be safe and efficient. Currently, the efficacy of the envisioned technology is assessed late in the development pathway. If insufficiently efficient, the technology may not pursue on its way to the market as is, whereas already a significant amount of resources have been spent. This represents a considerable risk when investing in such technology. To help designers make the right choices before fully developing surgical technology, virtual prototyping allows to test a specific design without completely physically building it. By combining advancements in the virtual surgical simulators and surgical skill analysis, experiments in the early stages of design would allow to predict the achievable efficacy with a specific design. However, great caution should be taken when drawing conclusions from these type of experiments. Indeed, in order to conduct experiments on a simulator at this early stage of development, quite a number of assumptions must be made. At the time of writing, there is to our knowledge no existing structured or standard approach for helping designers gather credible evidence of efficacy in well identified study conditions.The aim of this doctoral work is to improve the assessment of surgical technology by proposing a structured approach for predicting efficacy. This will provide insights on the surgical efficacy of innovative surgical technology early in the design phase. Such information will allow designers to decide if the studied technology is worth developing into a functional prototype respecting the tougher requirements and specifications asked by the succeeding phases of development.
Jaar van publicatie:2021
Toegankelijkheid:Open