Just a few days ago, it was announced the Microsoft would be participating in building a defibrillator map for emergency services in the UK to help increase survival rates of cardiac arrest. Now Alder Hey Children’s Hospital has announced that it wants to introduce HoloLens in operating theatres, and Surface Hubs in meeting rooms.
Rafael Guerrero, a Cardiac Surgeon at Alder Hey, said:
“Imaging a patient’s heart from the inside and from the outside is absolutely essential. I have to visualize that 3D view in my head in order to do this operation. You can display those images on a screen in the operating theatre sometimes, but it’s not easily accessible; and I can’t leave in the middle of an operation to go get more information about my patient. In many cases, the heart has already stopped in order for us to operate.
Microsoft HoloLens and mixed reality will, in the future, enable me to have a patient’s scans in front of me while I’m doing the operation. If I can use technology to obtain that information, to see those images in front of me, that helps me tremendously and improves the outcome for my patient.”
To deliver the project, Microsoft is working with Black Marble to develop and app and introduce the technology to the hospital. Black Marble said that the common factor of the Surface Hub and HoloLens in the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), this means that the application can be written just once, reducing costs.
The blog post did not mention the costs of the project for the NHS, and while it’s not unusual for the health service to partner with private companies to deliver services, it has in the past failed to keep its Windows systems up to date, likely, in part, because of the financial stress it is under; as a result it was impacted by the WannaCry Malware.
Image via NHS
