The students who often pay attention to technology are no strangers to AR/VR. In fact, the VR industry has been developing for some time before this time. However, the influx of capital last year made this industry quickly noticeable.
As such, for us ordinary people, 2016 can indeed be regarded as the first year of VR/AR. But this industry has also experienced its ups and downs. Indeed, it may take some time for a technology like VR/AR to really enter our lives. After experiencing turbulence, it also requires meditation.
Will you be curious and how quiet the VR/AR is now?
Today, I spoke to one of the secret sources: According to spy probe, VR/AR technology has already had a brilliant performance in the medical field in the United States, and is likely to completely subvert our experience in seeking medical treatment in the near future!
Wait, aren't these two techniques usually used in games? Many of the “VR and AR experience halls†on the street are also games. How does it relate to medical treatment? In fact, all this is not without reason.
VR, AR: From the game "cross-border" Medical is no accident
In fact, it is not a coincidence that VR and AR have started in the field of gaming and entered the more "serious" areas of "medical care."
PS4's R&D team said that when VR first came out, everyone needed to explore and learn VR's “interaction laws†through games. To put it bluntly, we humans are used to seeing the truth for so many years. VR and AR are "seeing things as imaginary." The "hands" we see in VR are not their real hands, so we need to learn this kind of " "The law of interaction" allows our eyes and brain to adapt and adapt, otherwise it will not be easy to grasp.
Picture from network
How to practice? Playing games is definitely a good way. By playing games, people can slowly adapt to how to control their hands in "virtual reality." After we have a deeper understanding of the “necessityâ€, we can do something more refined, such as surgery, and more demanding things.
Why VR, AR + medical, not other areas? This is related to the fact that VR and AR are just able to solve the pain points in the medical industry. With VR and AR, when medical staffs learn new skills and practice surgical operations, they can be in an environment that for the first time in history “makes mistakes and it does not matterâ€. Practice, anyway, these mistakes are not "true." In case of mistakes, it will not pose a danger to the patient.
Under this premise, the combination of VR/AR and medical care can basically be divided into three categories: the first category is “doing surgeryâ€; the second category is “physician skills trainingâ€; the third category is “patient rehabilitation trainingâ€. .
Surgery: Real exercises prevent mistakes
With the help of VR and AR, patients can “walk into†his body with a doctor to develop a more precise treatment plan.
This is what the Surgical Theater, a startup company in the medical field VR, does. The company’s “precise VR†function was inspired by fighter pilots: fighter pilots often fly several times in the simulation cabin before actually flying, so that they can become proficient when they really fly.
The founder of Surgical Theater thought: Surgeons should do the same! Before surgery, you are familiar with the patient's body. You can deal with various conditions faster during surgery.
Therefore, they prepared a 360-degree virtual reality tailored to each patient to reproduce the lesions of the patient's body so that the doctor could “drill†into the patient’s body together with the patient, and they could also walk around inside the patient’s body. Shopping malls look around and take a look at the lesions. Then the doctor and the patient discuss the treatment plan.
When the surgery is actually performed on the operating table, the doctor will be familiar with the situation of the patient because he has already “prepared†before, and the sudden situation will be much less. How are you listening to your heart? The company’s partners now include universities such as NYU and Stanford University.
In addition, Israeli startup Augmedics is currently working on the development of augmented reality headsets for surgeons performing spine surgery. It seems that VR is more inclined to "preoperative preparation," and the role of AR is better reflected in the surgical process.
Simulation exercise lancet
The lancet in the doctor's hands is directly related to the recovery of the patient on the operating table, and can even determine the life and death. Using VR to train surgeons can reduce the occurrence of surgical errors.
3D systems This company took the "simulated surgical environment for doctors" to the extreme. The company started out doing 3D printing itself, but they combined their technology with virtual reality and made something called "Simbionix Simulator."
The look and feel of the Simbionix Simulator is almost the same as the actual surgery. Well, the surgeon wears the proprietary VR eyeglasses to perform the surgery on the simulator. The angle and the weight of the scalpel are all reflected in the Virtual patient. Everyone is not the same body, and when experienced doctors are not sure. With virtual reality, surgeons can practice exercises first and improve their performance in real surgery.
Really interactive help recovery
As we all know, the rehabilitation of burn patients is usually long and painful.
There is a hospital in Los Angeles that began trying to use VR to lead patients into an immersive game, allowing patients to divert attention from the pain of being burned, ease anxiety, and relax.
Maybe you would say: Is this useful? However, it is a temporary diversion. Not to mention, the hospital found that some burn patients reduced the amount of pain tablets needed after wearing VR glasses - and not only temporarily reduced pain tablets when wearing VR glasses, but burned patients took VR glasses. After a period of time, the need for pain relief tablets has been reduced over the long term.
This has two benefits: First, it relieves the suffering of the patient, and secondly, because the pain is relieved, the patient actively requests early discharge and the hospital stays in a shorter time, saving the patient a lot of money. It seems that the recovery of patients with VR-assisted burns is not as simple as "temporarily shifting your attention."
In addition to burn patients, some patients with damaged brains are also challenged during the rehabilitation process.
The neuro-technology startup MindMaze recently created a VR application that inspires the patient's visual and auditory participation. This application continuously encourages the patient to perform repetitive motions, such as repeatedly picking up an apple by hand and placing it on a table. Take it up, drop it again... This kind of repetitive exercise can speed up the recovery of the nervous system. It is an unprecedented new method for patients with stroke or brain injury. It's no wonder that this company was valued at US$1 billion within a short period of time. .
MindMaze Pictures from the network
For example, amblyopia or blind people. Patients with poor eyesight have many inconveniences in their daily lives, and guide dogs are basically a luxury, not to mention guide dogs, which can only help patients bypass obstacles and have limited functions.
OrCam has developed such a system: a camera that is attached to the frame by a magnet and is connected to a portable computer that can be placed in the pocket of the trousers through a small thread. The patient wears the portable device on the body and the camera captures it. After passing through the augmented reality system, the bone conduction speaker can clearly read the contents of the reading, such as the words on the road signs, traffic lights, and human facial expressions, greatly reducing the lives of visually impaired patients. Obstacles.
Although VR/AR companies that want to enter the medical field now seem to have sprung up like a mushroom, they will be just like a few years ago with smart hardware. Which company in this batch of companies will not "naked" after this tide retreats?
Tian Tang is a Bay Area engineer with deep research in the field of VR. What kind of VR, AR companies fly? Tian told Xiao Tu, mainly to look at the following two points:
1. Teams are not reliable (this is no different from other innovative companies in other areas);
2. See if the company’s relationship with hospitals, clinics, and health care institutions is tight and how often does it work? ─ ─ The characteristics of the medical industry itself determine that if a fledgling new company wants to survive, it must go to a hospital and other institutions. There is close cooperation.
How is the future? Look at the market
Do not look at VR, AR, and medical field “just right nowâ€. The potential of this market is very large: Goldman Sachs predicts that the market size of VR and AR will reach 80 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, and the market scale that can be used in the medical field can It reached US$5.1 billion and is expected to have about 3.4 million users. It is no wonder that the major VCs and PE companies in Silicon Valley are very much in pursuit of companies with "VR, AR + medical care."
However, VR / AR is not yet the master key to solving medical problems. Tian introduced that the current "VR, AR + medical" startup companies in the United States need to face the following challenges:
Budget? The hospital is increasing the budget of the clinical simulation center so that they can purchase VR/AR equipment. Third-party companies that work with medical institutions also began budgeting for VR/AR solutions.
Understand? The public's understanding of VR/AR still remains at the stage of “is it just for playing games?â€, and there is no awareness that VR/AR is associated with medical treatment.
The field is too new. As an emerging field, the technology of VR/AR is very novel, and large-scale research is needed before it can be applied in a large scale in the medical field. Of course, this is not a problem unique to VR/AR. Many other emerging fields also face the challenge of not having enough research and mature technology.
There are also other issues, such as the fact that some hospitals are slow to accept new changes and related policies and regulations need to be updated.
However, in general, this wave of VR/AR in 2016 did promote the development of this technology, and it is time to make some progress. I believe that the next time we see VR/AR again, it will bring us different surprises. .
After talking so much, we may wish to open a new hole: What are the possible application scenarios for VR/AR+ medical services?