One of the ways most people get acquainted with augmented reality is usually through the game Pokemon Go. But augmented reality is having much more far reaching impact than making some very popular video games. For example, in healthcare, as professionals and researchers become more aware of the scale and scope of augmented reality, we are beginning to understand the truly revolutionary nature of this technology.
For some time now, it was assumed that virtual reality would be the next big thing in terms of technological breakthrough with applications in everyday life. But while a completely immersive 3-D environment is created in virtual reality, augmented reality combines the real with the digitally creation in real time and we are learning of a much wider range of applications, in fields like healthcare and others.
Augmented reality is helping us to go beyond the geographical barriers for access to the latest techniques in surgery. If presence of the expert surgeon is the only thing that is preventing a specific surgery from taking place, augmented reality can solve that issue and the best expertise can be made available in the most remote corners of the world. A surgeon who is present in the operation theatre can arrange for the streaming of the video of the patient to the most qualified surgeon based in a different location. Now as they are watching, the expert can help by guiding the procedure, and this guidance need not be limited to oral communications, but the surgeon can explain and guide with annotations and drawings. Augmented reality makes it possible for the surgeon present in the operating room to visualize everything on the screen, and this is then overlayed onto the live feed of the streaming video of the patient, which will give a better guidance on what they intend to do.
Other than helping with the live surgeries, augmented reality also exponentially grows the opportunities available for development and training. The medical studies can actually see a top-grade specialist performing the surgery in the different part of the world, and the surgeon could also augment the data with the life pictures of the surgery Students can watch a specialist carry out a procedure in another city or even country, and the surgeon can augment the live pictures with references, notes, diagrams, and so on and so forth. Augmented reality, hence, also makes it possible for the young medical professionals and the students to get a much broader level of experience as compared to what they would have obtained by watching the surgery live in an operating room.
