How Doctors are Using Mixed Reality in a Time of COVID-19

An interesting project at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has brought the versatility of mixed and augmented reality products to the forefront of the news. Called the Imperial led project, the initiative has doctors wearing the Microsoft Hololens headsets whilst working on the front lines of the COVID pandemic, to aid them in their care for their patients.

The use case for this project allows other clinicians to sit in another room, and by using Microsoft Teams, see a live video feed of the doctor who is treating the COVID-19 patients. This is utilising the remote assistance aspects which have been previously used by Hololens users for manufacturing, maintenance, and other similar applications. By using the devices, staff reduced the amount of time they must spend in a high-risk area by 83 per cent. Not only this, they are using less PPE, as fewer clinicians are in the room during patient care.

The use of mixed and augmented reality in a hospital setting has been discussed for several years, with surgeons for example, being able to view overlays of xrays or simulating operations before the actual event. To support the rapid development of the Hololens for this use case, MedicaliSight provided an important role to ensure that the Hololens and Remote Assist has the correct security, management and network capabilities of the NHS trust. It also ensured that the device is easy for clinical adoption – the user must be able to instinctively use the device. These instinctive use cases are even more important in a high stakes environment such as caring for patients on a high-risk ward.

Mixed reality is just one part of the “Spatial reality” family, the others including augmented and virtual reality devices. In the future, more use cases such as those of the Hololens will be found, and IDTechEx predicts this market to be over $30Bn by 2030, and part of this will come from an uptake of devices used in these novel, high impact use cases.

To identify these use cases, it is important to have a holistic overview of the current capabilities, future growth opportunities, and hindrances of this technology. IDTechEx provides a range of market research reports, with the most recent report on augmented, mixed and virtual reality published only a few months ago. “Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality 2020-2030: Forecasts, Markets and Technologies” includes market research on AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality) areas, compiled from historic data from nearly 100 companies and over 170 distinct products and forecasts from 2020-2030. It can provide you with the insights into this exciting and growing market area, infiltrating many aspect of users daily lives for many more years to come with its novel use cases and applications.

Source: IDTechEx