In the operating room with the Google Glass - Print

the U.S., was born the company that provides physicians with the tools for interventions:
“So you view the data of patients and equipment without being distracted»

The first operation in which a surgeon used the Google Glass is last November at UAB, University of Alabama at Birmingham, for an operation on his shoulder, but the use of “google-goggles” is spreading in operating rooms.

The ability to ‘lead’ the surgeon even after “seeing” what another is doing is a major help, as well as being able to have under control all the vital parameters of the patient. Innovations as important as helpful to the point that she was born a company specialized in making display more and more data during surgery without the surgeon to look away. He explains the blog Singularity Hub, according to which all major U.S. hospitals are experimenting with the device.

The company, founded by Stanford University, is called VitalMedicals, and has already built an app that sends the glasses to the patient’s vital signs, including alarms if the values ??of concern. The next step will allow the surgeon to visualize with voice commands images of preoperative x-rays and other tests, together with those of the tools that already guiding his hands, as fluoroscopes, ultrasounds and sonograms. Being able to control and retrieve all this data without using their hands, thus avoiding even surfaces that come in contact with potentially unclean, will be of great help, explains Pierre Theodore, the cardiothoracic surgeon at the University of San Francisco has one of the first Glass brought in an operating room.

“Having the data in a convenient format and always present – he explains – can lead to more efficiency and make better decisions when you have little time.”

Before having a large-scale deployment of the system, says the expert, some technical problems have to be solved. The first concerns also in this case the privacy, with tests and images that do not have to trace the identity of the patient. In addition, the device must be protected against hackers, and the wifi should be made safe and not interfere with other equipment in the operating room.