TIME magazine has named Carevix, the cervical tenaculum device we designed for medical technology company Aspivix, one of the 200 Best Inventions of 2024.
TIME's annual Best Inventions list highlighted Carevix for addressing a problem too often overlooked: pain during IUD insertion, caused primarily by the traditional tenaculum, a sharp metal instrument used to grip and stabilise the cervix. According to the magazine, this pain affects nearly nine out of ten patients and frequently discourages women from choosing an IUD as a contraceptive method at all.
We designed Carevix together with Aspivix's team, gynaecologists, midwives and patients. Instead of piercing and clamping the cervix, Carevix stabilises it with gentle suction — a shift that significantly reduces both pain and bleeding during insertion. Early in the process, we built functional prototypes to test the device's single-button interaction with real users, refining it until the handling felt genuinely intuitive for clinicians.
The FDA-cleared device is being rolled out first in Aspivix's home country, Switzerland, through a partnership with global IUD manufacturer Bayer, with U.S. commercialisation to follow. Carevix previously won an iF Design Award in 2022 — TIME's recognition now places it among the most significant medical innovations of the year.
Carevix is a good example of how we approach Medical Design: understanding the people using a product as closely as the product itself, and turning that understanding into devices that are safer, more comfortable and easier to use. If you're developing a medical device and looking for a design studio that combines UX/UI design, industrial design and in-depth user research, we'd like to hear from you.
Read more about the project: Carevix case study
Read the TIME feature: TIME Best Inventions 2024
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