Time is of the essence, and this is especially true in the operating room. Wearable displays have lot of potential uses in Health Tech applications, but they can be especially helpful during surgery as they can allow doctors to focus their attention more on the patient and less on the machines that monitor the patient’s status. With the help of VitalMedicals, doctors decide to test the use of Google Glass in the OR.
The study tested the performance of a group of surgery residents as they practiced certain procedures on a dummy. The preliminary results show that the doctors who wore Google Glass while performing the procedure spent nearly 90% less time looking at the patient monitors than the control group, yet they recognized critical changes in the patient’s condition about 10 seconds faster. By a large majority, the participants felt that the Google Glass aided their situational awareness (64%) and could improve patient safety during operations (85%).
Google Glass is being widely tested around the world in clinical medical settings, and I expect that we’ll see adoption of head-mounted displays spread rapidly as approved systems become available.
