The team’s redesign took home second place in a recent competition
Photo by Matt Hagen (Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship).
At the end of February, a team of UVic students and recent graduates received an award for their innovative re-design of the vaginal speculum — a medical device which has changed only incrementally in 150 years, and causes patients physical and emotional discomfort across the board.
Keeley McCormick, Samantha Sperling, Joshua Latimer, Zoe Crookshank, and Devon Carmichael belong to the company Revyn Medical Technologies, which they founded following a successful class project.
The group of five began their speculum redesign in January 2023 as a course assignment in a human factors class. The assignment was to reimagine a medical device with the concerns of end-users in mind, such as usability and patient comfort. Plenty of positive feedback kept the project’s wheels in motion, leading to Revyn’s founding and continued work on their redesign.
Now, the team is the proud recipient of the 2024 second place award from the Holloman Health Innovation Challenge.
The challenge is an annual competition held at the University of Washington, where students from across the Pacific Northwest share innovations in health technology. The Revyn team took home the Herbert B. Jones Foundation Second Place Prize in the amount of $10 000.
“We went in thinking even being there and getting to participate [was] a win, so to leave with second was obviously exciting, but also really validating,” says McCormick.
The vaginal speculum is a metal (sometimes plastic) device used for pelvic examinations — typically in procedures to check the health of pelvic organs such as the vagina, cervix, uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. Its current form, invented in the mid-nineteenth century, resembles a duck bill.
According to McCormick, Revyn’s CEO, the initial inspiration for the redesign came from one team member in particular, who was introduced to the vaginal speculum after witnessing his partner have a procedure done.
“He came back to the group and was like, ‘I can’t believe … you still have to have this device used. It looks like a torture device.” says McCormick.
Other members of the team agreed — they had also had negative experiences with the vaginal speculum.
“I think it really speaks volumes about the way that gynecological care is treated,” says McCormick. “You sort of settle for what exists because you have to do these things to take care of yourself.”
The team can’t yet share many details about the physical form of the redesign because they are still in the process of seeking Intellectual Property protection. However, McCormick explained that their priority in the redesign was to create something patient-centric that also prioritizes the needs of the practitioner, so the patient can be comfortable and treated properly.
In the process of creating their redesigned speculum, the Revyn team surveyed over 600 patients to get feedback about their experiences, both emotional and physical, with the vaginal speculum.
McCormick says that of the 600 surveyed, 87 per cent said they experience discomfort or pain during speculum exams, 80 per cent reported anxiety, fear, or emotional discomfort during the exam, and 42 per cent said they were delaying or avoiding necessary preventative care because of negative feelings (physical, emotional, or both) about the vaginal speculum.
People often avoid preventative care because of the discomfort the speculum can cause, says McCormick, and these adverse feelings have tangible consequences. Cervical cancer, despite being largely preventable, is on the rise — and McCormick advocates that fear or anxiety around the use of cervical screening tools should not be contributing to the increase.
McCormick says that at the heart of the redesign was the question, “How can we … make it as emotionally and physically comfortable as possible, while still completing the procedure the way that needs to be done?”
Although developing and patenting a medical device can take years, the Revyn team is optimistic about the future of their speculum redesign.
With the funds from their recent award, the team is looking forward to developing more prototypes with biocompatible materials, which they couldn’t previously afford to use.
McCormick says that because of the physically vulnerable nature of procedures that involve the speculum, it might be unreasonable to expect that a redesign would completely rid patients of emotional discomfort when they have such procedures done. But, she adds, “It shouldn’t be a physically uncomfortable experience. There’s so much technology that we can leverage to get rid of that [discomfort], and it’s a shame that we haven’t yet. But I think it’s possible.”
