Google Glass Approved For Surgery
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
UCSF is the first to have received approval to use Glass during surgery from the Institutional Review Board
The University of California, San Francisco “is the first in the nation to receive Institutional Review Board approval for the use of Google Glass during surgeries,” according to the Sacramento Bee.
HealthLeaders Media reports, “While it has already been used in orthopedic and gastrointestinal surgeries, the University of California at San Francisco is the first to receive IRB approval for use of Google Glass during cardiothoracic surgery. Already, Pierre Theodore, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon at UCSF, has performed 10 of 15 planned surgeries using Google Glass.”
Theodore says Glass handles images during surgery better than the giant screen tucked away behind various medical equipment ever could. "We did a series of dry lab experimentations to demonstrate that hand-eye coordination and the distraction using the Glass was minimal, and that the images could be readily brought up and removed from the vision of the surgeon," he said. "We sought limited use in a single specialty for the first pilot trials, and we set certain metrics and aims."
One problem, however, is Glass requires Wi-Fi and there are a variety of devices in an OR that interfere with its reception. Theodore is concerned about Glass transferring data through the cloud, saying, "A lot of this information is actually transferred over networks, of which certain portions of those networks can be less than perfectly secure. That of course becomes more and more important as we think about transferring information over a whole variety of wireless networks."
It’s clear they are still working out the bugs on how to make Glass a success for surgery assistance. Another concerning question: Is Glass a distraction to surgeons? Theodore says, “It's a really important question, because, in fact, it can potentially be extraordinarily distracting. The advantage of Google Glass, at least as we've designed it, and used it in our early implementation, is that it's a voluntary decision to have the image actually show up in the field of vision, which means that when the Glass is off, it's virtually as though you're just wearing your glasses or your contacts or what have you."
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