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Looking beyond the speculum

Estimated to save 4,500 lives per year in the UK, cervical screening is one of the most effective preventative healthcare measures available. Even so, many women delay or avoid appointments due to their discomfort, embarrassment and anxiety associated with the procedure. Research suggests that as many as one in three women in the UK miss or postpone their cervical screening appointments, highlighting a significant challenge for healthcare providers and patients alike.

For us, this offered an important opportunity to explore how human-centred innovation could improve an experience that directly influences healthcare participation, patient experiences and outcomes.

The traditional speculum has long been the norm for cervical screening. While clinically effective, its design has evolved relatively little over time, with improvements often focusing on efficiency rather than patient experience.

When approaching this challenge, rather than asking how we could redesign an existing instrument, we started with a different question: What would cervical screening look like if it were designed around women’s needs from the beginning?

Answering that meant looking beyond the procedure itself to understand the emotional realities surrounding cervical screening, including the anxiety, vulnerability and loss of dignity that many women report experiencing.

To get to the heart of the issue and fully understand these barriers, our team conducted interviews with women, clinicians and healthcare professionals to hear directly from them.

With patients, we asked for feedback on the wider journey around cervical screenings, from receiving an appointment invitation through to attending the appointment and receiving results. From gynaecologists and other healthcare professionals we sought to understand the practical realities of screening procedures to help us identify the clinical requirements that would need to be balanced against patient needs, including sterility, workflow integration and procedural efficiency.

Rather than treating human-centred research as a one-time activity, user feedback continuously informed the design decisions that followed, with human factors becoming just as important to the project as the technical requirements. Multiple concepts were evaluated, refined and tested before Forme emerged as the strongest solution, with this iterative process shaping every stage of development.

Designing for dignity

One of the most powerful insights from our research was that dignity matters – a seemingly obvious and yet often neglected factor. Many women described feeling exposed, vulnerable or disconnected during screening procedures. We recognised that even small changes to the way clinicians and patients interact could have a meaningful impact on the overall experience.

As our research progressed, it became clear that improving the experience meant more than a cosmetic or shape redesign and instead required a fundamental rethink of the interaction between patient, clinician and device.

To address this, Forme incorporates an integrated imaging system that allows clinicians to remain seated face-to-face with patients during the procedure. This supposedly small design choice can make a huge difference in supporting a more human interaction, helping maintain communication and dignity throughout the appointment. When patients feel informed, respected and in control, the experience becomes less intimidating and more accessible. For clinicians, it enables them to work more comfortably and naturally while maintaining the visibility required to perform the procedure effectively.

As the iF Design Awards jury noted, Forme represents “a long-overdue innovation executed with great care and intelligence.”

The role of industrial design

For Forme, industrial design brought together user insight and technical feasibility to reconcile complex emotional, clinical and functional requirements into an empathetic solution that feels intuitive, purposeful and non-threatening.

The result is a concept that replaces the traditional speculum with a softer, handheld device designed to visualise and collect cervical cell samples with minimal invasion. Beneath an approachable appearance sits a sophisticated mechanism capable of controlled articulation and extension. Forme can easily adapt to different anatomies while maintaining the access, stability and functional performance needed for cervical visualisation and sample collection, made possible through significant engineering innovation in the device’s internal architecture.

Every design decision in this process was informed by a simple principle: if we want women to feel more comfortable attending screening appointments, then their needs must be considered throughout the entire development process, not added at the end.

Innovation through collaboration

Forme would not have been possible without collaboration across disciplines. Industrial designers worked alongside human factors specialists, engineers, mechatronics experts and software developers from the earliest stages of the project. Together, we explored technical, user and clinical requirements in parallel rather than sequentially.

This transdisciplinary approach is central to how we work at CC. Whether we are developing healthcare technology, consumer products or entirely new product categories, our goal remains the same: to combine deep tech expertise with human insight to solve real human problems.

When these disciplines come together around a shared purpose, it becomes possible to create solutions that are both technically advanced and genuinely meaningful to the people who use them.

A broader lesson for healthcare innovation

Forme began with a simple decision: not to improve the existing solution, but to question whether it was the right solution at all.

While it remains a concept, Forme’s development highlights an important lesson for the future of healthcare innovation. The most successful technologies be those that understand people’s needs, reduce barriers to care and fit naturally into everyday lives. As healthcare moves towards connected, patient-centred experiences, usability, accessibility and trust will become just as important as clinical performance.

As we explore in our Shaping a new era of human-centred innovation report, we’re seeing the same opportunity emerging again and again across healthcare and beyond, showing that success will come only when technology works around people rather than asking people to adapt to technology.

Ultimately, Forme is a perfect example of what becomes possible when technical expertise and human insight come together around a shared purpose. By starting with people first, we can create innovation that people are more likely to trust and use, ultimately helping deliver better experiences and better outcomes for everyone.

That same mindset can unlock opportunities far beyond healthcare. When organisations challenge long-held assumptions and allow emerging technologies to shape new answers, entirely new products, experiences and categories can emerge.