Euflexxa AR App & Microsite

Background

Medically-accurate models are useful tools in the medical industry – providing doctors, medical professionals, and patients a visual way to understand complex anatomy and how disease or injury can impact our bodies.  Long a staple in doctors offices and medical institutions world-wide, these large, detailed, physical models have helped countless scores, but take up valuable space in a shrinking world.  Hyper-specific, bulky, and quickly outdated, physical models, with all their drawbacks, have remained simply because of the educational value they provide.

 But what if there was a better way?  What if, by harnessing modern technologies, these models could be better – more interactive, more educational, more customized to the target audience?  What if I tell you that through the power of Augmented Reality this revolution has already started?

Strategy

In the Osteoarthritis (OA) of the Knee experience our team brought this concept to life through a custom web application and interactive Web AR experience – removing the need to produce physical models that illustrate the disease states of OA while at the same time adding a whole new level of easy-to-access information and interaction.  

Designed to launch from printed materials in doctors offices, the OA of the Knee experience was tailor made to reach the right audience in the best location – ultimately generating increased conversation around treatment options that drastically improve the quality of life of patients suffering from this debilitating disease.

Execution

Our team worked closely with the agency Benchworks in developing the project storyboards, consulting throughout the process to ensure that the client’s vision was upheld, but more importantly, that it was achievable in a successful way.  We developed detailed wireframes to support the visual storyboards and an aggressive calendar to plot out all of the design & development milestones in order to meet a challenging client deadline.

Our talented 3D artists modified and re-worked a series of medical stock 3D models to suit the project needs – hand sculpting degenerative details for each of the various stages of OA, and optimizing it all to be performant as a mobile WebAR activation.

The microsite and web AR experience were developed in-house as a Single Page Application with an iframe for the AR scene integration. As a web-based AR experience, development utilized the most up to date web AR tech through the 8thWall SDK, which builds upon the A-frame JS/HTML framework, the core of which is the 3D rendering library Three.js. Our team collaborated directly with the client’s web and analytics team to coordinate transfer and publishing of the final site to AWS for hosting, and the infusion of every interaction with anonymous metrics tracking that feeds directly into the client’s Google Analytics infrastructure.

Outcome

The Osteoarthritis (OA) of the Knee experience is a medically-accurate 3D model of the knee, presented in web-based Augmented Reality, that showcases five distinct disease states throughout the progression of OA of the Knee: healthy, early OA, mild OA, moderate OA, and severe OA.  The user taps to progress through the disease states while the 3D knee morphs to illustrate the damage sustained right in front of the user’s eyes, embedded within their real-world surroundings.  Viewable from any angle, and scalable to get a closer look, the AR knee also provides interactive touchpoints that explain what’s happening on a molecular level throughout each stage.

The AR knee experience is supported by a custom web application that provides a user interface for navigation, explanatory molecular-level medical animations, a closer look at treatment options with pros and cons, and link outs to learn more for both patients and medical professionals.  The web app is also infused with anonymous analytics tracking, providing the client with comprehensive use data and real-time metrics that feed into their existing metrics dashboard.

Developed for web release utilizing the 8th Wall Web SDK, this experience is available to anyone with a modern mobile device – no app download required.  Check it out and learn more about OA of the Knee at oaofthekneeexperience.com.