Within spinal surgery, pedicle screw placement is gradually shifting from conventional freehand techniques toward navigation-assisted and robot-assisted procedures. Although robotics offers important promises in terms of precision, consistency, and intraoperative control, its implementation is not straightforward. The adoption of robot-assisted surgery is shaped in part by questions of workflow integration, trust, safety, responsibility, and the changing role of the surgeon. Against this background, SEeCURE Surgery is developing the Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) sensor that can provide real-time information from within the bone during screw placement. The central question of this study is what value this DRS sensor can create for surgeons within the future context of robot-assisted pedicle screw placement, and under which conditions this value can be realised in practice.

This research adopts a human-centered and future-oriented design approach. Current practice and the future context were examined through literature research, an exploratory interview with an orthopaedic surgeon, an expert interview on surgical robotics, desk research into existing robotic systems, an expert interview on organisational conditions, workflow mapping, and operating room observations. These insights were then translated into four future scenarios, structured along the axes of technological autonomy, the degree of possible surgeon intervention, and the role of DRS. The scenarios were evaluated through qualitative, generative validation interviews with four orthopaedic surgeons, with the aim of clarifying under which conditions robotic support becomes clinically acceptable.

The results show that the value of DRS lies not primarily in sensing alone, but in its ability to make robotic support more clinically understandable, safer, and more workable in practice. Central to this is a trust gap: whereas surgeons in current practice rely on direct, embodied, and tactile confirmation, robotics requires trust in technically mediated information. DRS can help bridge this gap by providing intraoperative, bone-based feedback that aligns with the familiar clinical logic of verification and interpretation. In doing so, DRS supports not only trust, but also safety by strengthening the surgeon’s anticipatory and corrective role, and functioning by allowing robotic support to align more closely with workflow and existing ways of working. The study concludes that DRS becomes most meaningful when it is integrated as a lightweight, interpretable, and supportive verification layer within a surgeon-led robotic system. In that position, DRS functions as a bridging technology that can accelerate the clinical acceptance of robot-assisted pedicle screw placement. ... Read more

This project envisions the future of telemonitoring for peri-operative care. Through an extensive literature research and further expert and context exploration, a design strategy is created, as a starting point for the development of new services and technologies in healthcare around surgical environments. The design process with a strong focus on analysis guided the development of the project. This allowed the creation of a future vision that considers the findings from the literature, user and trend research and gives a direction to the current state. Within the creation of a future vision, different scenarios are detailed, to give a more detailed idea of how peri-operative care would be. In addition, some recommendations and future steps are presented, to facilitate the achievement of these future scenarios by providing the stakeholders involved with some tools to assess the viability of implementation and inclusion in planning. Finally, the project includes a call to action to develop technologies and services that enables the extension of care to the home context and the empowerment of patients to have a conscious and active role in maintaining and seeking their wellbeing. ... Read more