Ankita
Member • Sep 20, 2013
Google Glass Used To Live Broadcast Surgery In India - Dr. J.S. Rajkumar At Work
In the times, where the wearable computing gadgets are being discussed and debated all over the tech town, a surgeon from Chennai, India has become the first person in the country to have live aired a surgery wearing Google Glass. Laying out a perfect example of the useful and practical application of the wearable device - Google Glass, Chief surgeon J.S. Rajkumar live streamed an upper gastro-intestinal laparoscopy procedure on a 45-year-old man to medical students seated two blocks away through the app Google Hangouts. Dr. Rajkumar who is Chairman of the Lifeline Hospitals in Chennai made use of the live streaming to impart the knowledge of performing the surgical procedure to medical practitioners and students. He thinks that the Google Glass is a great medium to help doctors in rural India to gain practical knowledge from medical practitioners seated in remote locations.
Dr. Rajkumar, who wore the latest gadget in the operation theatre, performed a medical procedure to repair the patient’s simple hernia on September 19. Praising the gadget whole-heartedly, Dr. Rajkumar said: “We did two operations. One was laparoscopic and one was open. I wore the Google Glass and performed both the operations. See, the advantage of the Google Glass, I want to explain is not that it is a machine that will operate or anything like that. We used it to transmit the data from the operating field to our annexe, which is about 500 metres down the road, where a bunch of doctors, surgeons and medical students and press people were sitting,” he said.
The benefits of live surgery are two-fold. Not just are the remotely situated doctors gaining the knowledge, but the patient also feels safe and secure because of the transparency coming with any kind of broadcasted surgery. Considering India’s poor infrastructure and insufficient medical amenities in rural areas, Dr. Rajkumar said these glasses would be a boon to the country as surgeons can virtually join hands to operate a patient. "This is a revolution in healthcare, not because it will allow me to cut deeper or cut sharper. But in India, 83% of the operations happen in villages and small towns, where you don’t have any big specialist. If that surgeon wears a Google Glass, and if he has got basic connectivity, whichever operation he is doing, I can sit five hundred kilometers away and see the operation live time, real time. I can help him, or another surgeon from Hyderabad can help him, surgeon from Delhi, all can work in parallel also to his screen and help him," he said.
Mr. Rajkumar partnered with a Virginia-based mobile and cloud-based software applications firm–Nasotech LLC–to access Glass and develop an application that allows uninterrupted video streaming through the device for more than 30 minutes. Nasotech is one of the few firms chosen by Google to test the gadget before its official release early next year. This is just the second time in history that Google Glass has been used, the first being in Ohio USA wherein a patients’ knee replacement was beamed live.
We truly believe that this is a revolution of the next level. Those who debate about the negative aspects of the device - in a way saying that it hampers safety and privacy - should note down how technology is changing lives. This example will be remembered whenever we list down the benefits and advantages of this technology. If Dr. Rajkumar is reading this, we would surely like to have your comments on this forum.
Dr. Rajkumar, who wore the latest gadget in the operation theatre, performed a medical procedure to repair the patient’s simple hernia on September 19. Praising the gadget whole-heartedly, Dr. Rajkumar said: “We did two operations. One was laparoscopic and one was open. I wore the Google Glass and performed both the operations. See, the advantage of the Google Glass, I want to explain is not that it is a machine that will operate or anything like that. We used it to transmit the data from the operating field to our annexe, which is about 500 metres down the road, where a bunch of doctors, surgeons and medical students and press people were sitting,” he said.
The benefits of live surgery are two-fold. Not just are the remotely situated doctors gaining the knowledge, but the patient also feels safe and secure because of the transparency coming with any kind of broadcasted surgery. Considering India’s poor infrastructure and insufficient medical amenities in rural areas, Dr. Rajkumar said these glasses would be a boon to the country as surgeons can virtually join hands to operate a patient. "This is a revolution in healthcare, not because it will allow me to cut deeper or cut sharper. But in India, 83% of the operations happen in villages and small towns, where you don’t have any big specialist. If that surgeon wears a Google Glass, and if he has got basic connectivity, whichever operation he is doing, I can sit five hundred kilometers away and see the operation live time, real time. I can help him, or another surgeon from Hyderabad can help him, surgeon from Delhi, all can work in parallel also to his screen and help him," he said.
Mr. Rajkumar partnered with a Virginia-based mobile and cloud-based software applications firm–Nasotech LLC–to access Glass and develop an application that allows uninterrupted video streaming through the device for more than 30 minutes. Nasotech is one of the few firms chosen by Google to test the gadget before its official release early next year. This is just the second time in history that Google Glass has been used, the first being in Ohio USA wherein a patients’ knee replacement was beamed live.
We truly believe that this is a revolution of the next level. Those who debate about the negative aspects of the device - in a way saying that it hampers safety and privacy - should note down how technology is changing lives. This example will be remembered whenever we list down the benefits and advantages of this technology. If Dr. Rajkumar is reading this, we would surely like to have your comments on this forum.
