This is Polaris — the pre-operative companion in the Patient Compass Suite. What you're walking through is the product itself, explaining what it does.

Polaris takes a surgical team's approved patient information and turns it into a paced, accessibility-first pathway: the same trusted content as a leaflet, but built for how people actually read, on their own timeline. This walkthrough isn't a real operation — it's a guided tour of the capabilities.

What you'll see in the next steps

• Dual-track content: every page exists in a standard and an easy-read version, one tap apart
• Branching that adapts the journey to each person — and always says why
• A conditional phase that appears only for some readers, with its reason stated plainly
• Checklists, step-level FAQs and alert banners in every tone the design system allows
• Risk shown in honest numbers, each with its source attached
• Illustrations kept behind a content warning until you choose to open them

Rich text, structured for reading

Authors can use bold for key facts, italics for gentle emphasis, clear headings, and numbered steps for anything sequential:

1. Read the step that matches where you are in the journey.
2. Tick off the checklist items as you complete them — nothing is stored or transmitted.
3. Move on at your own pace. The pathway never rushes you.

Quotes can carry a patient-voice framing, a reassurance, or a key principle the team wants to stand out. (This one is demo content.)

Links work too — find the suite at patient-compass.co.uk.

When a real pathway offers more than one option, Polaris lays them side by side so a patient can weigh them calmly, in their own time. The two examples here are illustrative — the clear comparison format is the feature.

Example A — the shorter, same-day route

• A lighter visit, designed so you can go home the same day
• Matches “Example A” in the chooser at the top of the pathway
• Fewer steps, sooner home

Example B — the route with an overnight stay

• A little more involved, with one night of observation
• Matches “Example B” in the chooser
• More support around the stay, home the next day

Note a platform rule on display: where a real source says a detail is “discussed with your surgeon”, the pathway says exactly that — it never invents a number to fill a gap.

Patient-Compass shows complication figures with their provenance attached, never as bare percentages. This demo carries two fictional examples:

• Temporary swelling — 5 in 100. Attributed to "Demo cohort 2025 (fictional), n=100": the local-cohort style, where a team publishes its own audited results.
• Wound infection needing treatment — 2 in 100. Attributed to "Literature: Demo Journal 2024 (fictional)". This figure is from the literature, not local data — and the patient-facing text always says so.

Both numbers are invented for this demonstration. The rule they demonstrate is real: a literature figure is never disguised as local data, and a range is never averaged into a single value.

Some readers prefer not to meet anatomical images without warning. In Patient-Compass, any figure can carry a content warning: it then stays collapsed behind a plain-language label until the reader opens it. Tap to reveal — this section describes anatomy.

Demo: this figure stands in for an anatomical diagramShow imageHide image

The same mechanic covers surgical photography and any image a team flags as potentially distressing. Predictability is the point: nothing appears unannounced, and nothing is hidden without a stated reason.

Why content differs from here

From this point the two demo tracks diverge. The day-case track sends you home the same afternoon, so its steps focus on arranging your journey and your first evening at home. The overnight track adds a hospital night, so its steps cover what to pack and what the ward routine looks like.

Steps that apply to only one track say so on their face, and the chooser at the top of the timeline lets you switch — or see both at once. Nothing is hidden without an explicit, plain-language reason. That predictability is a deliberate accessibility commitment, not a styling choice.

This step appears only on the day-case track — that is the feature it demonstrates. In the fictional day-case journey you go home a few hours after the procedure, so the week before is about logistics: who brings you home, and who stays with you that first evening.

This step appears only on the overnight track. In the fictional overnight journey you stay one night, so the preparation is a small bag and a plan for the next morning's pick-up.

This step is shared by both tracks. Its timeline label — "Day before (demo)" — shows how every step anchors itself to a moment in the journey, so the timeline reads as a sequence of when, not just what.

In the fictional scenario: nothing to eat from midnight, clear fluids until two hours before, and a shower the evening before.

You are inside a conditional phase. The whole of Phase 4 exists only for the day-case track, and its header carries the plain-language reason: "Only if you choose the day-case option". Patients on the overnight track see the phase greyed out or absent — never silently missing.

In the fictional scenario, you rest for two hours after the procedure, have a drink and something light to eat, and are collected by your pre-arranged adult in the late afternoon.

On the day

A real pathway mirrors the team's own admission routine, in their words — arrival, the consent and anaesthetic conversations, and what happens next. Polaris simply presents it, calmly and in order, so nothing comes as a surprise.

And afterwards

Here the two examples diverge one last time: Example A goes home the same afternoon (the conditional phase you may have seen above), Example B settles in overnight. Either way, the next step hands the patient over to recovery.

Recovery lives in The Compass, the post-operative companion in the Patient-Compass suite. The demo continues there: a seven-day fictional recovery timeline with daily guidance, activity and red-flag advice, wound-care reference content, and a dedicated dressing-change day with numbered, step-by-step instructions.

Look for the procedure "Demo: Showcase Recovery (fictional)" in The Compass to walk it day by day.