The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2017–2025
Philips makes a room-size stroke imager feel like 'a safe pair of hands' — iF Gold 2025
Philips' Azurion Neuro Biplane makes a huge imaging machine feel soft and friendly, moving around the patient instead of moving them — iF Design Gold 2025
Philips (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
What it had to solve
Neurovascular procedures like stroke and aneurysm treatment are high-stakes: every second counts, the team works in a sterile field around the patient's head, and the imaging system is huge and intimidating. Philips' design team spent eight years observing clinicians inside real angio suites.
How it works
Philips' Azurion Neuro Biplane is an image-guided therapy system for neurovascular procedures — stroke and aneurysm treatment — where every second counts. The design team spent eight years observing clinicians inside real angio suites and co-creating with them, then built a system whose form language is deliberately soft and friendly despite its size.
The idea was to make the complex feel effortless: imaging arms rotate around the patient's head, controls sit at the table side so the team stays in the sterile field, and the system switches rapidly between 2D and 3D imaging — all without moving the patient.
In 2025 the system won the iF Design Gold Award, one of only 75 Golds from nearly 11,000 entries across 66 countries. The jury described it as 'human-centered design at its best': 'Despite its immense size and complexity, the form language is soft and friendly. This feels like a safe pair of hands.'
The Azurion platform, launched in 2017, has become one of the most widely used image-guided therapy systems in the world, enabling over 6.4 million patient procedures each year across more than 80 countries.
Why it lands
- It treated empathy as a design requirement: a machine in a crisis room should feel like a safe pair of hands, not a threat
- The system rotates around the patient instead of moving the patient — workflow and human dignity designed together
- Eight years of observation and co-creation inside real angio suites grounded every choice in how teams actually move
- Table-side controls kept clinicians in the sterile field during stroke and aneurysm procedures
What it did
The system won iF Design Gold Award 2025 — one of only 75 Golds from nearly 11,000 entries across 66 countries — with the jury calling it 'human-centered design at its best' and noting the form 'feels like a safe pair of hands'. The wider Azurion platform enables over 6.4 million procedures a year in 80+ countries.
What you can take
In life-critical rooms, design around the patient and the team: calmness can be an engineering requirement, and moving the system instead of the patient keeps care where it matters.
Since then
The Gold Award capped eight years of continuous development of the Azurion platform, which Philips says enables over 6.4 million procedures a year across more than 80 countries. Philips received 48 iF Design Awards in total in 2025, with the Neuro Biplane as its Gold winner, and the soft, workflow-first design language continues across its image-guided therapy portfolio.
Sources
- Human-centered design at its best: Philips Azurion Neuro Biplane wins iF Design Gold Award 2025
- Designing with Purpose: A Q&A with designer Ivo Stuyfzand on the Azurion Neuro Biplane and winning iF Gold
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card