Healthcare is becoming more innovative every day. We see it with robotic surgery, electronic medical records, minimally invasive procedures and much more. Today, with people constantly consumed by technology, it was only a matter of time before healthcare crossed paths with technology that allows doctors to transmit information “face-to-face,” rather than verbally via telephone when they cannot be in the same room.
A year ago, I questioned whether Google Glass would be the vision everyone wants in the future, but I wasn’t referring to healthcare, I was referring to consumers. Google Glass currently targets early adopters and technology enthusiasts – “explorers” as Google calls them. It was expected to become mainstream in 2014; however, the product has not taken off as projected and was sold to the public for the first time at a PGA tournament earlier this month. Maybe the Google Glass marketing team should be focusing on marketing to a different audience, hospitals and medical centers. In fact, our Client, The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, is among the first few medical centers in the world to embrace Google Glass technology and use it as a tool to enhance their medical procedures.
Photo Credit: Google
At Karmanos, the Head and Neck Oncology Multidisciplinary Team has teamed up with Wayne State University and is using Google Glass to monitor patients in both Karmanos’ inpatient unit and the Intensive Care Unit. They will use it on patients who’ve received a tissue transplant surgery because they must be monitored every hour for the first 48 hours following surgery to check the transfer of tissue (referred to as a “flap”). The study is still in a pilot stage, but will be ongoing. According to Sagar Patel, M.D., resident with the Head and Neck Oncology Multidisciplinary Team at Karmanos, they will use Google Glass “to transmit and record the status of the flap between resident physicians and their supervising physicians.”
This is exciting news for the world of healthcare and we cannot wait to read the findings of the study once it is published. If successful, we have to wonder if hospitals around the world will embrace Google Glass technology to monitor patients, transfer information “face-to-face” or even diagnose patients.
What do you think about using Google Glass in hospitals and medical centers? Is the future of Google Glass in marketing to hospitals and doctors?
