Measuring the quality and impact of 3D medical printing in surgical planning, procedures and communications using product usefulness surveys

Abstract

3D printing is an essential technology for clinical decision-making, affording significant improvements over conventional imaging alone. Product usefulness surveys offer potential in measuring the quality and impact of 3DP to assist clinical decision-making and patient communication. A narrative literature review (Scoping Review articles only) frames the benefits and limitations of 3D print surgical workflow and user experiences. A usability survey was co-designed with a company to measure the impact of their 3D prints on surgical practice, and secondary data analysis was conducted of to understand the effectiveness and usefulness of the technology in a real-world healthcare setting. Three categories of usefulness and relevance were identified. High-value relevance (positive Likert scores over 70%) related to pre-operative planning, clinical communication, and the value of the technology. Moderate scores (50% to 69%) related to time saving with pre-operative surgery, and effectiveness of patient care and diagnosis. Minor relevance (less than 50%) included direct cost savings, physical resource efficiencies, time in intra-operative surgery, or intra-operative risks. This research considers 3D printings relationship to medical error prevention, limitations and future recommendations for usability surveys of this type and it identified issues around gender inclusion in Design for Health research.

Keywords:

• 3D medical printing
• usefulness
• user experience
• surgical planning
• patient communication

Disclosure statement

Axial3D are a spin out company from biomedical engineering at Ulster University in 2016. The Axial 3D Insight software was included as a research output for Ulster University’s Art & Design Unit of Assessment and featured in an Impact Case Study for REF2021. The company survey evaluation and redesign were funded by Invest Northern Ireland, Innovation Voucher scheme (No. 130222014, 2020), as part of wider research making recommendations for the company’s future strategy (Justin Magee and Raymond Bond). The data analysis was completed by an independent PhD researcher (Ozelle Kimalel), studying usability of medical devices and then checked by the academic team for accuracy.

Additional information

Funding

Axial3D’s segmentation software Axial Insight was funded through a design-led Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (2017-2019: KTP010763) with Ulster University (Magee and Wilson). We thank Axial 3D for permission of the images for Figures 1 and 2.

Notes on contributors

Justin Magee

Justin Magee is a professor of Design and Research Director for Belfast School of Art. He attained his PhD at Ulster University in 2010 titled ‘3D digital modelling of spinal posture’. His research spans Design for Health, Experience Design and Immersive Technology applications. His applied research has received national recognition for Impact and Knowledge Exchange in the Innovate UK KTP Awards, Business Transformation and Impact finalist (2022) and the Times Higher Education Leadership Management Awards, KE initiative of the year finalist (2018). He has secured £16.1m across 29 external design research awards and is Principal Investigator on 17 of these (£6.25m) securing funding from AHRC, UKRI, Innovate UK, Invest NI, Enterprise Ireland, British Council, DCAL and HSCNI. As a practicing product designer, he has worked on >85 commercial projects (e.g., Randox, Smart MCC, Mercedes and LEGO Systems). He has served on the HSCNI Office for Research Ethics Committee (2017-2019).

Ozelle Kimalel

Ozelle Kimalel is a third year PhD researcher in the Belfast School of Art at Ulster University. Her current project explores human factors evaluation in medical device design with a specific interest in measuring usability and user experience. Her research interests include health technology evaluation, medical devices, emerging digital health technologies, and healthcare delivery technologies. Ozelle completed her undergraduate degree in Information Systems at USIU-Africa in Kenya and her master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction at the University of Nottingham. She is also an alumnus (2019 cohort) of the Healthcare Entrepreneurship program by MIT Bootcamps and Havard Medical School.

Kyle Boyd

Kyle Boyd graduated with a BSc (Hons) Interactive Multimedia Design in 2007 and again in 2009 with a MA Multidisciplinary Design. In 2014 Kyle graduated with a PhD entitled ‘An investigation into improving the Usability of Social Media for older users and their carers’. All three awards were completed at Ulster University. Dr. Kyle Boyd has research interests which range from Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience Design, User Interface Design, User Experience Research, Usability Engineering, Social Media and Digital Health which is the application of digital technology in healthcare. He has published in these areas with papers spanning usability, Interface design and measuring user experience. He has been involved on research projects funded by InvestNI, InterTrade Ireland, HSC, AHRC, ESPRC and Interreg.

Raymond Bond

Raymond Bond is a professor of Human Computer Systems at Ulster University. His research interests include the application of human-computer interaction and machine learning techniques within digital health and clinical decision making. He also has research interests in usability engineering/user experience data analysis methods to evaluate medical devices and is involved in designing and evaluating digital health and wellbeing interventions. Raymond has over 450 research outputs and has chaired/co-chaired national/international research events, including: 1) 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction conference, 2) the 45th/46th Annual Conference of the International Society for Computerized Electrocardiology, 3) the 31st Annual European Conference of Cognitive Ergonomics, 4) 2022 Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) Symposium and 5) International Digital Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference.