Plastic at its most woman-friendly

The challenge

For most women, pelvic examinations are far from pleasant. Not only are such examinations embarrassing, they also feel uncomfortable. The instrument that has been used for this purpose for centuries is called a speculum or 'duck's bill' and it feels cold and hard. Apart from that, inserting and opening the speculum can be painful. This instrument has disadvantages for doctors too: it is difficult to use and has to be sterilised after each use in an expensive autoclave that not all GPs have available in their practice. An attentive GP felt that it was high time for an alternative system.

This new system would have to meet several requirements - it should feel more pleasant for the woman, be easy to position and made so as to allow the doctor to see clearly. Moreover, it had to meet the highest hygiene standards to eliminate the risk of cross-contamination.

The approach

A collaboration between Attema Kunststof & Techniek and First, an agency in the Dutch town of Enschede, took various patented ideas developed by general practitioner and inventor B. Klaassen for a 'woman-friendly' speculum and turned them into an ingenious system. Attema Kunststof & Techniek provided the technical know-how for the production. The new speculum, the 'Femiscope', is made of plastic and consists of two elements: the femiscope handle which is reused repeatedly, and the single-use, disposable femiscope tip. The round, anatomically-shaped tip is designed in such a way that it can be inserted and opened deeply into the vagina, in the part that has fewer nerve ends. To assist opening, the tip is the only system of its kind that has an interior hinge mechanism operated from the handle. The handle itself comes with a recharger light system, for which the electronics are supplied by Attema Kunststof & Techniek. The speculum needed a special shape, for practical reasons, but primarily so that it would feel more pleasant for the woman. This presented Attema Kunststof & Techniek with the additional challenge of constructing a mould suitable for injection moulding this complex product.

The result

Made of a plastic material that feels warm to the touch, the anatomically-shaped Femiscope is a woman-friendly instrument that has no sharp edges and stays in the desired position during examination. An instrument that doctors find easy to use because the handle can be detached while the tip stays in the vagina during the examination. The tip is disposed of after use, a hygienic option for the patient and a convenient one for the doctor, who can now do without an expensive autoclave.