Everyone dreads getting sick. The worse thing is not illness, but the wait time to see a physician. For someone like myself who lives on an island, where medical help is scarce, I cannot wait for the day when technology will provide me with immediate access to a physician right from my desktop.
According to the report from World Health Organization (2016), “5.9 million children under the age of 5 years died in 2015. More than half of these early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions.”. Bringing good health care to the developing countries is no easy task, from transportation challenges, infrastructure problems, financial constraint, to lack of health care professionals. Imagine if medical access can be obtained from the pc, the number of lives that we could save in the developing countries, where medical help is scarce or non-existent.
Microsoft Hololens technology has recently partnered with Case Western Reserve University to explore bringing 3D content into the real world for medical school students. It hopes to foster better learning through this augmented reality technology. But more importantly, through this simulated medical environment, students will have an experience where they can fail and learning from their mistakes. Theodore Roosevelt had a great quote "The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." However, in the current real medicine practice, there is no room for error and failure as the stakes and consequences are far too high, a matter of life or death.
Through this state of the art technology, it opens up opportunities for learning something new that will help medical students make deeper progress in their learning along their journey. It enables them to visualize their work, explore new ways to share ideas with each other, and experiment new ways to create medical breakthrough they imagine. The potential of this technology is endless, not only transforming the medical industry, but also the possibility of saving millions of lives where the healthcare is facing a crisis globally.
References
Chau, B. (. (2016, June 20). Case Western & Cleveland Clinic using augmented reality for
medical education. Retrieved from iMedicalApps:
http://www.imedicalapps.com/2016/06/case-western-cleveland-clinic-augmented-reality-
medical-education/
World Health Organization. (2011, September). Child Mortality. Retrieved from
http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/press_materials/fs/fs_mdg4_childmortality/en/