A Roadmap towards Touchless Interaction during Image-guided Therapy

Abstract

Philips is the global leader in Image-Guided Therapy (IGT). This medical specialization provides integrated solutions that allow for minimally invasive medical procedures. A specialized medical team consisting of multiple stakeholders works closely with Philips's newest technological devices and systems during these interventions. These complex procedures are followed and guided via real-time, on-screen imaging modalities. This way, technology-enabled, optimal care can be provided for many different interventions. Clinical demands, challenges and complexities can be very specific and patient-dependent. Often bottlenecks in IGT procedures come down to limitations like sterility and hands-busy situations. However, touchless interaction technologies provide solutions in many ways. Technologies like eye-gaze, voice control and gesture sensing are expected to minimize the number of mistakes made and time lost because of inefficiencies. The future context of IGT is explored by doing creative trend research to get an idea of the technologies, trends, and developments in the future healthcare landscape. A future vision of IGT is established to give an expression of a desired future. It provides a strategic reference point for actionable innovations. Through qualitative research, ideation and conceptualization, several design implications are provided. Synthesizing these concepts into an implementation strategy that aligns with the future vision is essential. Since the result of this thesis will be a roadmap, a division is made into three separate horizons leading towards the future vision. These horizons address a particular aim, alignment with the developing healthcare landscape and related implementation of the concepts into the roadmap. Through validation and assessment, the roadmap is optimized and aligned with the business. An estimated improvement target is established as a reference point. Additionally, the expected value of the clinical and operational performance of the concept propositions are estimated and substantiated. This results in a strategic roadmap that can deliver concrete insights and provide guidance in the implementation possibilities of these touchless UI innovations in this healthcare domain.