Introduction to Augmented Reality in Healthcare
Ari Grobman is the Chief Executive Officer at Lumus. Augmented reality (AR) has quickly made inroads in healthcare. In 2020, doctors performed the first-ever spine surgery using an AR, head-mounted display. A 78-year-old patient was suffering degenerative spine disease that required lumbar decompression and the insertion of several screws. Surgeons wore the FDA-approved AR headset to visualise the patient’s CT scan as they operated and placed the implants with 100% accuracy.
What is Augmented Reality?
As against virtual reality (VR) technology, AR superimposes computer imagery on the actual world, through AR glasses or other headsets, allowing healthcare providers and their patients to visualise information because it’s applied in actual healthcare situations. This allows for greater efficiency, accuracy, personalization and overall higher (and safer) care.
Impact of AR in Healthcare
Augmented reality and its companion innovation, artificial intelligence (AI), are already revolutionizing healthcare delivery, from the operating room to the doctor’s office to medical school. Since the primary AR surgery, neurosurgeons have used AR for a whole lot of surgeries. It’s even been speculated that every one surgeries could possibly be performed with AR.
AR Surgery
Surgeons wear AR headsets as they operate, allowing them to see information, similar to patient imagery without turning away from their critical task. With the addition of cameras and AI software, surgeons and their AR/AI solutions can see what’s happening inside a patient, process vast amounts of information to interpret it and return on-the-fly diagnoses or procedural suggestions right within the AR headset.
Medical Visualization
In addition, solution providers have developed AR tools that allow healthcare providers to superimpose visuals on patients that help deliver safer care beyond the OR. For example, when administering medicine, nursing staff can view an overlay of a body’s vein structure to more easily discover the precise vein and obviate the sometimes painful means of trial and error.
Patient Education
Healthcare, especially surgery, may be unnerving for patients. Using AR, doctors might help patients visualize how their bodies work, how a specific condition might affect their health and even understand what specifically will occur during a procedure. With AI, such visualization can take note of a patient’s particular health data to personalize the experience for his or her situation.
Patient Diagnosis
Sometimes, it’s hard for patients to explain their symptoms, resulting in delays in diagnosis and treatment. To the extent that symptoms manifest visibly, AR might help. Through AR glasses, patients can visualize different skin conditions in comparison with their very own with a view to more accurately describe their concerns to doctors. Or they’ll experience various eye conditions in AR to let doctors understand their condition.
Pain Management
AR, like VR, helps immerse patients in therapeutic environments that doctors can control. The FDA has already approved headset solutions that depend on cognitive behavioral therapy to assist patients loosen up and cope with pain. Similarly, AR may be used during physical therapy to attenuate discomfort. Combined with data in regards to the patient’s particular pain, AI might help personalize the pain management experiences.
Immersive Training
Perhaps probably the most prevalent use of AR in healthcare is in training. Doctors and medical students can explore the human body, practice procedures, understand latest techniques and solutions, and more in virtualized environments which have all of the characteristics of the actual world. AI helps inform and interpret those environments in order that they alter and react in response to a health care provider’s or med student’s actions. And since the AR environment is digital, it will probably be shared with others, so students in a classroom can see on a screen what their colleague is seeing through AR glasses.
The Vast Potential Of AR In Healthcare
At this point, we’re scratching the surface of what AR and AI can do for healthcare. Add to the combination a brand new generation of online collaboration tools and doctors wearing AR headsets that may seek the advice of with one another—even guide each other through a procedure, even once they’re physically miles away from one another. Others involved in healthcare, similar to pharmaceutical and genomics corporations, can use AR and AI to higher visualize, analyze, discover and develop latest drugs, viruses and therapies.
Implementation and Safety
Of course, change may be daunting, especially with regards to healthcare. When minimally invasive laparoscopy was first introduced—a procedure by which a surgeon accesses the abdomen with a camera and a tiny incision—it took time before it became thought to be a protected, preferred methodology. To catalyze the means of protected implementation and trust, organizations can perform thorough education and training: implement small-scale pilot projects to familiarize medical staff with AR-supported tools and stay consistently involved within the evolving AR industry to make sure solutions are as up so far as possible.
Conclusion
AR and AI are already proving protected and effective, and their impact stretches well beyond hospitals’ and doctors’ offices. And like other advances in healthcare, AR advantages from innovation. Just as greater, higher-resolution display monitors in modern operating rooms allow doctors to visualise patient information in greater detail, AR technology continues to develop for greater precision. Headsets which can be easier to wear for long periods deliver truer representations of medical imagery and create a wider sight view so wearers can absorb more information while specializing in delivering exceptional care. AR helps doctors do what they do best, with greater confidence and accuracy. Patients receive higher, safer care. As the technology grows and develops, all of us can expect latest ways to see a healthier future.
