by Rajesh Shashikant Renukdas, on Nov 18, 2020 6:00:47 PM
The immersive technology has infused life into the visionary ideas of numerous industries. One such industry that is outpacing the number of use cases and channeling exponential growth to make the greatest ever contribution to the welfare of mankind is Healthcare. The global augmented reality & virtual reality in the healthcare market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 29.1% from 2018 to 2025 to reach USD 5.1 billion by 2025.
The expansive nature of the extended reality technology stack has further diversified this contribution to range from abilities for testing new procedures virtually to making basic healthcare accessible to 5 billion digitally active individuals. Further, to that extent, it has also proved its effectiveness in continuous and prompt delivery of medical aids to people through the pandemic crisis. Henceforth, the AR/VR implementation in healthcare is expected to be a permanent and disruptive force that will foster both patients' as well as practitioners' safety while fueling innovation.
In this blog, we will take a look at some of the most inventive use cases of AR/VR technology in healthcare harvested through the mobile channel:
Body mapping
There are numerous examples of AR/VR tech in healthcare, that enhance the medical training for students before actual surgeries and help doctors experiment with complicated procedures on a virtual human body. AR-based apps can help doctors create simulation of patient body to work with complex scenarios or make up for the absence or scarcity of doctors by synchronizing and connecting multiple sensors. It also paves way for numerous opportunities for the practitioners to capitalize on available information and AR-based hardware to carry out complex medical tests.
Accurate risk and disease diagnosis
AR-based applications can help doctors detect, avoid, and treat several diseases with better prognosis. It can enable visualization of information collected from different sensors into a unified interface to gauge specific reasons for the patients' condition. It can also let doctors to monitor veins, lesions, organs, etc. without doing invasive procedures. EyeDecide is one such medical app that uses the camera display for simulating the impact of specific conditions on a person’s vision. For example, the app can manifest the impact of Cataract or AMD and hence help patients know their symptoms better.
Augmented surgery
AR-based apps can improve the safety of patients during surgery by providing surgeons with real-time upfront information on the patient’s vitals, procedures’ details, equipment locations, and other requisite data. AR-based virtual interfaces empower doctors to visualize the locations of the organs of the patients along with the location of disease, tumor, or other abnormalities. This , in turn, expedites the procedures while maintaining the safety of the patient and enhancing the doctor’s cognitive conscience. For instance, during a TAVI heart procedure, the surgeons need a lot of data and real-time information through sensors such as instant X-rays and 3D U/S scans. AR-based apps can let them quickly access such important data sets.
Virtual scrub-in for doctors
AR/VR based apps can enable remote collaboration of multiple doctors that can aid the consultation process and help identify the patient problem accurately. It can also provision collaborative remote surgeries, conferences between doctors situated across diverse locations working on a common or related medical issue. For instance, Proximie is an AR/VR based virtual surgical collaboration platform that provides doctors with hands-on virtual assistance and also lets a remote surgeon virtually scrub-in during a surgery.
Description of patients' symptoms
AR/VR based apps can help doctors access numerous simulations of certain medical conditions and narrow down the patient visits or errors through the diagnosis. Several diseases can be accurately prevented and cured through AR-enabled mobile apps while also enabling patients to be self-sufficient in taking precautionary measures through the recovery process. This will, in turn, result in higher patient consultations to time ratio and avoid unnecessary interaction with doctors multiple times a week. Accuvein is a SaaS platform that uses an AR-based handheld scanner that projects over the skin and shows the exact location of veins in patient bodies to nurses and doctors to expedite blood collections and other vein related procedures.
Aid in psychological treatment
AR-based apps can invent fresh ways for therapists to help their patients by leveraging virtual setups and demonstrate the effectiveness of the sessions that are otherwise just verbal. It can also help facilitate pain reduction and sleep improvements in patients. Therapists or doctors can leverage customized environments to cure phobias as well as certain addictions in people. Moreover, it can also help doctors to comprehensively understand the patterns and types of disorders in their patients to develop better and targeted treatments. Datamatics built a VR based app for Alzhiemer’s patients that provided an engaging task to users with progressive dementia, like occupational therapy, for motivating them in attempting more daily tasks. The app resulted in a 100% engagement and improvement in patient motivation, social interaction, and learning process.
Surgery planning and execution
AR-based apps can help provide multiple simulation models to plan ahead of time for operations. They can also experience multiple scenarios to ensure the accuracy of sequences and optimize courses of action in varied circumstances. PROPRIO is a Seattle based company that combines AR with machine learning to generate ultra-precise 3D medical images to enable clear vision through obstructions and make surgery plans. The AI intelligence platform analyzes the 3D models and shares surgical information in real-time.
Simulating practical medical training
AR/VR based apps can help medical students in training for high-complexity procedures by helping them closely analyze human anatomy as well as other mechanics of the human body. It can also enable increased interactivity in learning by providing deeper insights into the nuances of human body functions. Ultimately, it can also let trainers test and examine student skills in a tailored virtual environment.
Doctor consultation
AR/VR based apps can also help doctors provide in-person consultation during emergencies and contagious situations. They can deliver essential services like pulse examination, emotion reading, vitals monitoring, or immediate remedies and first-aid during heart attacks, electrocutions, poisoning, etc. to prevent deaths and complexities due to the prolonged absence of aid.
Conclusion
Healthcare has been one of the most high-impact industries when it comes to technological intervention and yet it has been slow to embrace AR/VR, due to challenges like insufficient funds and lack of awareness. However, in the new era of the Internet of medical things and immersive technologies, faster implementation and higher investments are expected in upcoming years. Hospitals and medical institutions need IT architecture and platforms that can expedite the adoption and hence ROI on the latest and the greatest use cases of AR/ VR.
To reinvent your healthcare facility with 3D visualization, and promote quality patient-centric care, support from the right technology experts is critical. We recommend getting in touch with Datamatics, that specializes in AR & VR app development in healthcare among other verticals to keep your healthcare services relevant for today’s digital consumers.
