It was just last night that I sat down with my 10-year-old daughter to watch one of her favorite shows, Star Trek Voyager. One of the main characters in the TV series includes an “Emergency Medical Hologram” known as “The Doctor.” The doctor, played by Robert Picardo, is Star Ship Voyager’s fully interactive, computer-generated, three-dimensional (3-D), resident physician who has saved the lives of numerous crew members.
While watching the series, I often wondered how cool it would be to have one’s own holographic physician available on demand. Imagine being seen for the flu right in your own home, or getting emergency care no matter where you are located. But we know that such technology is just science fiction, or is it?
Back to the Future
Earlier this year at the 2015 Build Developer Conference, Microsoft unveiled its HoloLens—a fully wireless, holographic computer that one wears like workshop glasses to work or play with 3-D content in the real world. HoloLens provides a more natural way to create, communicate and collaborate. There are no computer screens or peripherals. A simple gesture, gaze or one’s voice is used to interact with the 3-D subject matter and others in the room, or those across the globe.
“Wow, that sounds really cool, but what does it have to do with medicine?”
We are glad you asked.
Microsoft has partnered with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (CWRU) to build upon and create limitless learning possibilities using HoloLens. With this technology, medical students are now able to literally “see” in 3-D all the systems of the human body in an interactive, inter-functional and layered format—reducing the need for cadavers.
Most importantly, CWRU claims this technology will help develop medical students into the best possible professionals by allowing them to fail forward in a real-time learning environment. And as the HoloLens is being used as a tool to study medicine, it is hard not to imagine its potential for practical use across all types of medicine.
The SpineOne Position
As one of Colorado's premier medical centers devoted exclusively to innovative spinal care, SpineOne is an advocate of new technology where it shows a proven benefit to the patient. If and when there are clinical trials that are able to show conclusively a proven benefit to a patient (along with continued trials by the rest of the medical community to acknowledge the medical advance's validity), SpineOne will consider this and other advances in technology. This being said, it should be fun to see where this type of technology takes medicine.
About SpineOne
Established in 2000, SpineOne Medical Center is a leading-regional medical center for minimally invasive spine care and has treated thousands of people in Colorado and surrounding states for back and/or neck pain. Many of these patients, who once had severe, even debilitating neck and back pain, are now living pain-free.
At SpineOne, our goal is to treat your pain symptoms with non-operative treatments whenever possible.
For your convenience, SpineOne offers same-day appointments and provides doctor consultations, MRIs and treatments all from the same facility.
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