The parade of exciting, groundbreaking new products available for surgeons stirs visions of elegant new healthcare opportunities. It also clarifies a truth too often overlooked: It’s imperative to get the design of the OR exactly right in the first place.

A growing awareness of that particular need is surely what drove the new ByDesign Experience from Stryker Communications to become the 2017 ESP nominee that drew the most interest among the readership of Surgical Products.

Partnering with Microsoft and leveraging the power of its unique HoloLens technology, Stryker has conceived a method of developing a new OR space that replaces cumbersome physical models with an immersive 3D, mixed reality experience, letting every invested member of a healthcare facility’s team examine a holographic image of the clinical space as the room is developed.

With a startling immediacy, equipment can be shifted in the space, making refinements to a design until it satisfies everyone. And those wearing the HoloLens can see the changes as they happen.

Using the technology, Stryker is there with the hospital personnel from the very beginning, when the new OR is only an idea.

“We’ll start with the base room design that has been vetted through a hospital’s design committee,” explains Aaron Young, Marketing Manager at Stryker.

The process is expedited, since models don’t need to be completely reconfigured. It’s just a matter of moving around the digital information.

The ByDesign software, exclusive to Stryker, gives users the opportunity to see the evolving space in different scales. That includes a full view, gives a sense of being actually in the room, able to peer around at different spots to make sure the equipment and personnel are where they should be.

“If the surgeon can’t get the equipment where they need it, when they need it, it does no one any good,” notes Young.

The surgeons should have a strong voice in the process, but one of the major benefits of the ByDesign Experience is the way it includes multiple constituents.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re the chief of surgery or the scrub tech,” says Young. “Everyone has a voice, and everyone has a perspective and sees something different within that discussion. That’s what unique. It’s sort of an equalizer, and everyone is gathered around a common goal which is building the best OR they can.”

Although Stryker is a wide-ranging manufacturer with the ability to provide much of the equipment needed within an OR space, the ByDesign Experience is deliberately vendor-agnostic. The goal is to partner with facilities to give them the best possible OR, no matter which equipment is used to populate it.

Solution-driven, the ByDesign Experience uses the Microsoft HoloLens to power past the limitations of 2D design and accurately visualize a finished operating room. The method saves time and money, reduces design errors, and ultimately allows healthcare staff to caring for their patients sooner.