ABOUT

Background:

Founded in 2014, CMR Surgical (CMR) - is a global medical devices company dedicated to transforming surgery with Versius®, a next-generation surgical robot. Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, CMR is committed to working with surgeons, surgical teams, and hospital partners, to provide an optimal tool to make robotic minimal access surgery universally accessible and affordable.

Working in a global market and faced with strong competition, CMR wanted to develop a new website, built on a modern, responsive, and flexible platform that would allow the business to delight customers through exceptional CX and UX, and that would become the central platform for marketing efforts and commercial activities. CMR needed to change the image of the company from an emerging and rapidly growing technology start-up, into a world-class medical device company, reflecting the fact that the Versius surgical robotic system has the potential to transform surgery for people around the world.

Solution:

The benefits of minimal access surgery for patients are well proven, and include reduced pain, and reduced risk of surgical site infections. However, minimal access surgery is complex and demanding to perform for a surgeon. It was important that the website fully showcase the key features of the Versius product, designed to support surgeons to perform more minimal access surgery:

• The fully articulated wrists, direct hand to instrument mapping, and integrated stable 3D HD visualisation on Versius provides incredible precision, control, dexterity and superb depth perception. This gives surgeons the means to perform surgical steps with greater accuracy and ease.
• Versius has instinctive instrument and vision controls and an open console design allowing surgeons to sit upright or stand, keeping them comfortable for longer each day, with the potential to prolong careers.
• Versius integrates seamlessly into existing workflows and doesn’t take over valuable operating room (OR) space. With a small footprint and ease of movement, Versius can be introduced to the OR easily and quickly.

The website needed to appeal to not only CMR’s primary target audience of surgeons and purchasing decision-makers within healthcare providers, but also future employees, investors, and the media, reflecting the company’s ambition and delivering the key messages to each stakeholder group. It also had to support CMR Surgical’s mission to bring the potential benefits of minimal access surgery to those who are yet to appreciate its potentially revolutionary impact.

CMR Surgical’s brief was clear but ambitious – create a website that, like their own technology, pushes the boundaries of design and delights those that engage with it.

Built on the Sitecore Experience Platform, the world’s leading digital experience platform, the website is fully responsive and easy to update thanks to Sitecore’s user-friendly back end content management system. It includes the key elements of:

• A home page with a clear benefit statement, backed with strong imagery and video
• Details about the Versius surgical system, including instrument range, support, conditions, and clinical evidence
• A section to publish press releases, an image and video library, and an events section
• Information about CMR’s mission, leadership team, medical advisory board, and investor information
• A careers page detailing benefits, current vacancies, and why CMR is a great place to work

The Codehouse team wanted the site to reflect the personality of CMR, to get across that sense of excitement you could feel when the CMR team spoke with such passion about their future aspirations. To enable this, several Experience Design workshops were held at the CMR headquarters in Cambridge, where the Codehouse design team were able to experience the Versuis surgical robotic system for themselves. This enabled the Codehouse team to get under the skin of the organisation and to collaboratively generate ideas for how the website could look, and how users should feel when engaged.

The project then moved into the UX design phase and into UI, with the Codehouse and CMR teams challenging and pushing each other to deliver an experience that would truly delight users. It was fantastic to see some of the ideas that were conceived in those early ideation sessions start to take shape.

Moving into the Build phase, the technical foundations of the site were established and the infrastructure set up on Microsoft Azure, part of the Codehouse Managed Service offering. The site then went live, reflecting some truly leading-edge design and development techniques, with the outcome being something that both CMR and Codehouse have been extremely proud to launch to the world. Versius has an elegant and beautiful design, and is captivating to operate – something which is directly reflected in the website and particularly in how the product page is navigated as you scroll. The new website is a platform that positions CMR as a leader in their space, through design, animation, imagery, interaction, and function.

CMR Surgical is at the start of a long and exciting journey, as is its digital presence. Already integrated with Salesforce CRM and Pardot, the website will soon be tailored to serve an increasing number of international markets. It will become the main gateway for all those who need to interact with CMR – including surgeons, surgical teams and hospitals – providing interactive access to training, information, and useful insights.

Results:

CMR Surgical has a new future-proof website that portrays the business as a global medical device company in a beautiful, human, relevant, and British way. Revealing CMR Surgical as a credible alternative to existing medical device giants, it showcases the elegant Versius surgical robotic system in a way that would make the ‘C’ suite of any medical establishment proud to have CMR’s system within their portfolio.

This ambitious website, both from a design and technical perspective, reflects the scale of CMR Surgical’s ambitions. A next-generation website for a next-generation organisation that is in the process of transforming surgery, for good.

CMR Surgical’s Head of Marketing, Patrick Pordage, said: “At CMR, we believe that patients should be receiving the highest quality of care, and that robotics is a solution to bring the benefits of minimal access surgery to the people who need it. With Versius , our goal is to empower surgeons to transform how surgery is performed across the world.”

Pordage continued: ”We’re delighted with our new-look website. The team at Codehouse worked hard to meet our requirements of showcasing Versius, whilst delighting visitors with a superior digital experience, and the results show. The website promotes Versius in a way that highlights its features and the benefits for healthcare institutions, surgeons, and surgical teams and positions us for further growth internationally.”