How Google glass can change healthcare

Google Glass can bring about a massive change in the way our hospitals function. It can save time, add efficiency and make treatment more comfortable for the patient.

Similar to normal eyeglasses in appearance, Google Glass is a wearable computer for your eyes. It follows natural language commands and can perform many functions. In India, Dr JS Rajkumar had live-streamed the complete procedure of upper gastro-intestinal laparoscopy and a hernia repair surgery to a group of medical students using the equipment.

How it can change health care?

Google Glass can bring about a massive change in the way our hospitals function. It can save time, add efficiency and make treatment more comfortable for the patient. It can also be used to produce training videos that can also be beamed live online.

Right from doctors to nurses to other staff in the hospital, can wear a Google Glass. Using face recognition they can then identify patients and have quick and easy access to their medical records, treatment plan, etc. If they need to add anything, like an image of the person's injury or notes about their previous medical history, they can do so using voice commands.

This will obliterate the need for paper-based medical records. Not only this, doctors can also connect to doctors from other clinics for second-opinion in a quick manner. 'This was a real stream lining of the workflow. What we see is what we would normally see on a computer work station. We have access to an entire patient medical record.', Dr. Steven Horng, an emergency physician told Boston Herald.

Rhode Island Hospital is currently testing out Google Glass in a dermatology study. Over the next six months, emergency room patients requiring dermatology work may participate sin the study. As such, they'll be examined by ER doctors wearing a 'stripped-down version' of Google Glass that will send images to an off-site dermatologist, who will review the images using a tablet.

The hospital is working with Glass-focused startup Pristine for this pilot study. Pristine's version of Google Glass doesn't include some of its core functionality and connectivity, nor is the device connected to the Internet. Rather, it streams live, sending encrypted audio and video information to the receiver directly. Photos, video and audio aren't stored in the Pristine version, either.

'It's every CIO's worst nightmare to have a breach or have video uploaded on YouTube,' Dr. Paul Porter, the principal investigator on the study, told MobiHealthNews. 'We really put a lot of time in trying to get the best possible conditions for confidentiality, picking a specialty that we thought would be the safest for the patients. In our study, [the Google Glass consultation is] over and above the standard of care, which is a phone call plus or minus a snapshot.' Read more about the 5 of the latest fitness equipments.

Testing began on March 1, and Porter says as soon as the study has 100 participants, he and his team will begin work on a paper. The device's potential is currently being tested in other areas of healthcare. Emotient, a leader in facial expression recognition software, is testing Google Glass with its own app that's said to gauge other's feelings. The company says it hopes to apply this concept to healthcare for determining warning signs of illness. Last month UCLA announced its development of a Google Glass app that reads diagnostic test strips.

Should the Rhode Island Hospital study be successful, the hope is to use the device in other healthcare applications, including emergency response, pediatric consults and stroke care.

When will see it in our hospitals?

Since, the technology is new it'll take some time for doctors and other healthcare professionals to get used to it. However, it may come sooner than we think. 'I think 2014 will be a tipping point. It's very clear to me the desktop is no longer the preferred device in health care. The idea of using tablets was very big in 2013. I think in 2014 we'll see the early adopters (of Google Glass).', Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel told Boston Herald.

With inputs from AFP

Image source: AFP

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