UK Lebanon Tech Hub Archives - Tech Trends

Changing the Way Surgeons Operate with Mixed Reality

Alice — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 07:35:34 +0000

Healthcare is one of the areas with most potential for dramatic improvement with the implementation of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality Technologies

The virtual world is already having a real impact in people's lives and health
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As countries around the world struggle to find health care provision models that balance the needs of aging populations with shrinking budgets—and as startups jostle to get into operating rooms—the virtual world is already being used to impact the health care of real people.

“I could be in Cleveland and teach a group of students in, say, London with all of us able to see one another and the holograms simultaneously,” says Professor Mark Griswold, Case Western Reserve’s faculty leader for the university’s efforts with Microsoft’s HoloLens, the $3,000 developer-edition-only augmented reality glasses. “The professor can see how students are interacting with the hologram in real time, and respond immediately with additional explanations or encouragement as needed.”

Devices like the HoloLens and consumer VR helmets like Samsung’s Gear VR and Facebook’s Oculus have received the most attention as vehicles for escape, but their real-world applications are growing fastest in the workplace. IDC, which pegs current industry revenues at around $5.6 billion, says much of the growth in shipments of VR and AR headsets over the next five years will come from industrial uses (80% a year), versus consumer uses (50%), like video games, films, porn, and other entertainment. Among current non-health care HoloLens customers, for instance, are companies like Lowe’s, Volvo, and ThyssenKrupp, whose technicians use the glasses to operate on ailing elevators.

Healthcare revenues for VR and AR technologies reached nearly a billion dollars in 2016
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In health care, revenues for VR and AR technologies reached nearly a billion dollars in 2016, according to Kalorama Research. Some estimate that by 2025, that number could reach over $5 billion, thanks to uses in areas like telemedicine, pain relief, robotic surgery, and, increasingly, medical simulations.

VR and AR are already being used in areas like pain relief, robotic surgery and telemedicine
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Medical instructors say a VR helmet, coupled with haptic-feedback “syringes,” can help a surgeon practice a complex operation in detail before carrying it out—or help a doctor with limited access to education locally get better medical training, improving patient experience and outcomes. A pair of augmented reality goggles can put an animated “patient” in front of students, making the expensive dummies obsolete altogether. And as medical operations become more sophisticated and high-tech, computer glasses could help get practitioners up to speed faster.

The United States is facing a shortfall of 100,000 physicians by 2030
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Health care experts have proposed new technologies like these as one of various solutions to what some have called a crisis in medicine: The United States could be facing a shortfall of between 48,000 and 100,000 physicians by 2030, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Since it takes between five and 10 years on average to train a new physician, medical industry experts say the U.S. urgently needs more people to enter that training pipeline now, particularly in highly specialized fields: The greatest shortfall, on a percentage basis, will be in the demand for surgeons, especially those who treat cancer and other diseases more common to older people.

Using Mixed Reality simulations to train surgeons could alleviate the shortfall and bring in cost savings
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Alleviating that shortfall and upgrading decades-old simulations with mixed reality could also ferry in cost savings that can’t come soon enough. In the U.S., the cost of health care continues to surge, far beyond the price of drugs: Open-heart surgery is 70% more than the next highest country; an appendectomy over two times more. And the price for a day in the hospital is about five times more in the U.S. than other developed countries.

Better Learning Through Virtuality?

For years, surgeons have relied on 3D modeling on computers to plan complex procedures down to the millimeter, so there are as few surprises as possible. The technology proved valuable for the team that separated conjoined twins Erika and Eva Sandoval at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto in 2013. In that case, surgeons donned 3D glasses to study digital renderings of the twins’ organs, allowing them to perform a heart valve replacement using an incision less than half the normal size. More recently, 3D modeling has merged with VR at Stanford Health Care, where an app called True 3D technology, developed with Mountain View-based company EchoPixel, promises to increase a surgeon’s ability to visualize and plan complex procedures beforehand

“Our biggest problem is cutting into an artery or vein that we did not expect,” says Eric Wickstrom, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who co-authored a 2013 study on the use of 3D models in surgery.

A clinical study published last year in the Journal of Neurosurgery looked at how surgeons rehearsed their operations using a VR-based brain modeling platform developed by the company Surgical Theater. The tool, in use at New York University, University Hospitals in Cleveland and Mount Sinai among others, appeared to help surgeons reduce the time it took to repair aneurysms, suggesting it also made the surgeries safer.

15 minutes with the HoloLens could save dozens of hours in the lab
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Making Virtual Bodies Feel Real And Real Bodies More Virtual

The next step in the equation will be to accurately reproduce not only the look but the feel of any surgical procedure. HoloLens partner FundamentalVR is already working on the addition of haptic feedback to surgery simulations, says Richard Vincent, the company’s founder. The London-based startup is developing a tool called FeelRealVR, which it describes as a “flight simulator” for surgery. In its current version, students use a stylus in place of a syringe, which provides realistic levels of pressure and resistance in relation to a hologram of a patient’s open knee joint, for instance.

Vincent argues that tools like this can make for better learners. The enhanced cognitive involvement that comes from not only seeing, but interacting with the holograms triggers active “Involved Learning,” he says, a recognized teaching methodology in which students have been found to retain much more of the subject matter than with traditional approaches.

Surgeons rely on 3D modeling on computers to plan complex procedures down to the millimeter, so there are as few surprises as possible
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AR is also augmenting instruction during real-life surgeries
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AR is also augmenting instruction during real-life surgeries. Hands-on, face-to-face lessons during real-life operations are in short supply, often limited to the limited number of students who can fit inside an operating theater. Surgeons who can teach are in such high demand, meanwhile, that experiential learning can be increasingly infrequent at medical schools, taught only once to a small group.

“Surgery is very visual. You can read it in a book if you want but it’s not the same as watching it live,” says Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, a NHS registrar in plastic surgery at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. “Yet it’s physically difficult to get many medical students in the operating room at any time.”

Hachach-Haram is cofounder of a company called Proximie that developed a way to use augmented reality to let a distant surgeon virtually place his or her “hands” or instruments onto a patient’s body. The idea is to let experienced practitioners guide operating teams on where each incision should be made and how to proceed. After being selected by the U.K. Lebanon Tech Hub Accelerator, Proximie is now rolling out a training pilot at The Royal Free Hospital, allowing 150 of its students to log in remotely to watch surgery through the application.

Mixed reality is also improving operating rooms in less obvious ways. ByDesign, a HoloLens app, helps surgeons, nurses, and technicians save precious time in configuring the setup of operating theaters. Whenever there’s a rotation, operating rooms need to be carefully reconfigured to meet each team’s very specific requirements, since even minute errors in that context can have dangerous consequences for both patients and practitioners.

Two surgeons hundreds of miles apart can both stand in different rooms looking at accurate holographic renditions of the same equipment
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Traditionally that means multiple people moving around heavy, delicate, and expensive equipment to test various configurations. In an environment where most facilities already operate near capacity, this resource-intensive process translates into higher costs and slower delivery of care, says Andy Pierce, president of Global Endoscopy at Stryker.

By donning an AR headset, practitioners can visualize objects in full-scale 3D, with the flexibility of being able to easily move virtual objects. Two surgeons hundreds of miles apart can both stand in different rooms looking at accurate holographic renditions of the same equipment, moving them around until they’re satisfied the optimum setup has been reached. This can then be saved and relayed to those in charge of setting up the operating rooms themselves.

Upgrading The Cadaver

A review of augmented reality in medical training published last year in the journal Surgical Endoscopy couldn’t say whether the technology would contribute to patient safety. But author Esther Barsom, a researcher in the department of surgery at the University of Amsterdam, noted that AR is “preeminently suitable” for helping improve the training of situational awareness during operations, a facet that is “lacking in medical curricula.” And, she wrote, “as training methods become more engaging and reliable, learning curves may be expected to become steeper and patients will ultimately benefit.”

Prof. Wickstrom of Thomas Jefferson University suggests that virtual simulations could also widen the recruiting pipeline: By making medical education more interactive and engaging, the medical field could become more accessible and attractive to those who previously might have been put off by traditional medical learning.

As training methods become more engaging and reliable, learning curves may be expected to become steeper and patients will ultimately benefit
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The time-honored way of teaching anatomy, for instance, is to have students spend months dissecting cadavers. But these procedures—not unlike the realistic mannequins at SimLearn—can cost tens of thousands of dollars. And cadavers can only be used by a limited number of students, and, naturally, only once.

Under Prof. Griswold at Case Western Reserve, anatomy students use the HoloLens to interact with virtual patients and organs, allowing them to pull back the various layers of the human body, visualize the muscles on top of the skeleton, and understand exactly where things are located. AR means that medical students are not confined to learning the terrain of a single body, but can see accurate visualizations of particular conditions such as cancers, heart disease, or spinal injuries.

“In the fall we did a pilot test of HoloLens with medical students who already had studied the cardiothoracic region for several weeks in the cadaver lab,”Griswold says. “After one session viewing the same area of the body wearing the devices, 85% said they had learned something new.”

Just 15 minutes with the HoloLens could have saved them dozens of hours in the lab, students who participated in the pilot told Pamela Davis, dean of the school of medicine. Case Western is now in the process of developing a broader holographic anatomy curriculum. “The quicker our students learn facts like these, the more time they have to think with them,” Davis said at last year’s Microsoft’s Build conference. “We are teaching them to think like a doctor.”

Originally published on the Fast Company website

The unreal, bleeding-edge tech that’s helping doctors make the cut https://t.co/g1dV4I5BBp pic.twitter.com/707KhPVUXz

— Fast Company (@FastCompany) June 20, 2017

Tech Trends’ Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to get a foothold in the growing Mixed Reality spectrum and enhance their brand strategy with these exciting new technologies.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Changing the Way Surgeons Operate with Mixed Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

How to save a life: Lebanese startups bring Big Data and IoT to HealthTech

Alice — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 12:39:38 +0000

Beirut might not be the first place that springs to mind when thinking about ground-breaking technology, but the fact is that Lebanese talent has actually played a pivotal role in many of this century’s most important innovations.

The UK-Lebanon Tech Hub is an initiative designed to showcase this innovative spirit and help promising Lebanese companies to scale up
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With a diaspora estimated at around 14 million, a staggering 90 percent of the population lives abroad, including some illustrious names such as Tony Fadell – who led the team that invented the iPod before founding Nest Labs, the developers of the world’s first smart learning thermostat, and now currently leads the Google Glass Division. And Ramzi Haidamus, President of Nokia Technologies and a key player in pushing the worldwide adoption of Dolby technology on DVD and Bluray during his time with the company.

The UK-Lebanon Tech Hub is an initiative designed to showcase this innovative spirit and help promising Lebanese companies to scale up, develop partnerships, and expand their global reach. 15 startups were carefully chosen for the six month accelerator, funded by Lebanon’s Central Bank and the UK government, which includes courses at leading UK universities and meetings with investors and tech entrepreneurs.

This cohort includes a range of bold and innovative concepts, elegantly executed, that are really pushing the envelope in the HealthTech arena.

Among these are a device offering allergy sufferers practical advice on how to improve their condition, a lighter which helps smokers kick the habit once and for all, and a cardiac monitor that can alert your doctor of danger signs before serious heart conditions manifest themselves.

CardioDiagnostics founder Ziad Sankari is a typical example of the new generation of Lebanese entrepreneurs emerging in the world stage. He founded the company in the US in 2012, but opened a Beirut base the following year:

“Some years ago it was easier to start up outside Lebanon, but since 2013 there has been far more Government support, including the Banque du Liban’s Circular 331 scheme. This made available $400 million to encourage banks to invest in the knowledge economy through direct investments or venture capital funds. We’re now looking to take the next step and really break into European markets.”

His cloud-based wearable heart monitor, LifeSense, recently attracted attention from Barak Obama, who invited Sankari to the White House and praised the innovative way that it leverages data in preventative medicine, alerting a patient’s doctor at the earliest signs of trouble and thus making it much more likely that they can get to life-saving treatment in time.

Paying tribute to their work, President Obama said: “You are the face of change. You have the power to drive creative solutions to our pressing challenges. You know how to bring people together to work toward a common goal.”

LifeSense is the first of its kind in the world, using advanced wireless monitoring system to automatically detect, record and transmit a wide range of cardiac events, checking the electrical activity of the heart, detecting abnormalities and allowing physicians to monitor patients continuously in real time. Accessible from any internet-connected device, the solution is Hardware-Agnostic, allowing for easy and cost-effective implementation.

“We’ll now be looking to develop partnerships with UK and European companies during our time in London, including medical device manufacturers, distributors and healthcare providers as well as scientific and research collaborations,” explains Sankari.

Slighter is also exploring similar partnerships as they prepare for their first trial in the UK, which will explore the effectiveness of their smart lighter in helping smokers quit by analyzing their behavior patterns.

The lighter’s algorithm manipulates the frequency at which users are “allowed” to have a cigarette, building a personalized plan based on their smoking habit, leveraging behavioral psychology, competition and social mechanics to offer a medicine-free smoking cessation aid.

After years of trying to give up smoking, Slighter’s inventor Samer el Gharib realised that social triggers and peer pressure were highly effective tools in motivating people to break the habit for good.

“The lighter gives you the option to ‘skip’ a cigarette or ‘cheat’ by having an extra one,” he explains “but it also gives you the option to challenge your co-smoker friends to compare their progress to see who reduces more or quits altogether first. You can then share your victories and get moral support from the community via the app”

Samer plans to build the first 200 lighters in the UK, expand the team, and build partnerships to better test, understand and target anti-smoking solutions. “For me this is personal, as I want to live long and healthy life with my wife and children, and I know there are a lot of people out there who will benefit from this device.”

Another ground-breaking IoT device that is set to improve the health of millions of people is Sensio AIR.

The device, developed by White Lab, is the first allergen and particle tracker that comprehensively analyses the air you breathe – identifying a vast range of irritants and allergens such as pollen, acarids, mold, spores and harmful gases – and then uses an its unique algorithm to propose a list of actions you can take to improve the air quality of your home. AIR pushes this data directly to your smartphone, also alerting of dangers such as gas leaks and fires.

“By 2050 it’s estimated that over half the world’s population will be allergy-prone, but unlike most allergy medication, AIR offers relief through prevention with no side effects,” says White Lab Co-Founder Cyrille Najjar, who recently won first prize at Harvard Arab weekend 2015 for their invention.

With 21 million people affected by allergies in the UK, it’s an ideal testing ground for the AIR’s roll-out, which will begin in February. “We want to make allergy prevention easy and accessible to everyone, and this type of device can prove really invaluable in schools and hospitals as well as the home,” explains Najjar.

Startups such as these three Lebanese superstars prove that IoT can also be about genuine lifesavers
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What these companies and their products all have in common is that they each tackle major health issues by leveraging data, as opposed to resorting to drugs, making their solutions universally accessible. It also represents a major shift in the Internet of Things space, which has so far been largely dominated by “nice-to-have” gadgets.

Startups such as these three Lebanese superstars, however, prove that IoT can also be about genuine lifesavers.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post How to save a life: Lebanese startups bring Big Data and IoT to HealthTech appeared first on Tech Trends.

Big Data and Big Ideas

Alice — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 12:28:35 +0000

How these Lebanese start-ups want to change the way we shop

In the last few years the ICT sector in Lebanon has experienced something of a boom, worth an estimated $381 million in 2014 and growing at a rate of 7.9 per cent. Traditionally, Lebanese talent tended to make its biggest impact abroad, with global diaspora estimated at around 14 million. However, this trend has recently started to shift, and we’re experiencing a “youth bulge,” with a new generation of entrepreneurs looking to start companies in their own country.

The global Lebanese diaspora is estimated at around 14 million
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One of the initiatives fostering this movement is the recently launched UK-Lebanon Tech Hub, a 6-month accelerator designed to help some of the country’s best start-ups to expand their reach and break into new markets. This cohort of promising entrepreneurs recently landed in London to work with institutions such as Cambridge and UCL to take their ambitious ideas to a global stage.

These ideas include several disruptions in the e-commerce space, ranging from social shopping to innovative uses of Big Data and a compelling new crowd-subsidising marketplace that gamifies the online shopping experience.

Slidr is an intriguing application of behavioural psychology to gamify the online shopping experience
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Slidr works by getting users to reveal a hidden price on their chosen item by using pre-purchased credits. Once the price is shown, users have 10 seconds to decide on whether or not to go ahead with the purchase before the price is hidden again. As more people click on the item, its price continues to plummet down, subsidised by the crowd’s collective credits.

In the last few years the ICT sector in Lebanon has experienced something of a boom, worth an estimated $381 million in 2014 and growing at a rate of 7.9 per cent
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“The user gets a great price from the start,” explains Slidr Co-Founder Fouad Assaf, a serial entrepreneur who founded and sold his first start-up in 1999. “We guarantee the starting price is lower than the RRP, but HOW much lower depends on how many people slide for it. It’s a fun way to shop that allows users to get fantastic value for exclusive items, and is basically a gamble that you can’t lose.”

It’s a mash-up of shopping and gambling, but it’s a gamble you can’t lose
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This unique mash-up of shopping and gaming creates a much more rewarding — and addictive — shopping experience: “We’re an entirely new e-commerce proposition focusing on aspirational products and experiences, powered by our algorithm which analyses consumer behavior patterns and decides on the price drop accordingly,” says Marwan Salem, Slidr’s Co-Founder. “This is a place where users will be able to acquire the latest trendy, innovative lifestyle items at guaranteed reduced prices, but also have a lot of fun in the process.”

Over the next months, they will be seeking partnerships with exclusive UK brands and designers to make their products and experiences available on Slidr. They plan to keep a presence in London and run dual operations between the UK and Beirut.

Another startup that’s using the UK’s thriving online e-commerce ecosystem as a springboard to global expansion is thatsoyoo, which brings the missing social layer into online shopping by providing a platform where users share that experience with their network in real time. It connects people and brands seamlessly so that users offer and receive instant feedback on their fashion choices, crowdsourcing opinions from people they actually trust — their friends.

This unique mash-up of shopping and gaming creates a much more rewarding — and addictive — shopping experience
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“We all know how convenient it is to shop online, but half the fun of shopping, specially when it comes to fashion, is in the social interactions that happen around it,” explains thatsoyoo Founder and CTO James Burbridge. “That’s a big problem with online retail, it can actually leave people feeling really isolated. So we built a platform where you can browse thousands of items from your favourite shops like TopShop, ASOS and Selfridges and get feedback from your friends in real time.”

The site’s chat panel allows shoppers to hold multiple conversations, video chat and watch live as friends view their favourite products. Users can build personalized shopping experiences, browsing hundreds of thousands of products from a wide range of brands, all in one place. “There’s also a huge opportunity for retailers here,” says Burbridge. “Nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned, and we know that friends, family and social influences have a huge impact in those purchasing decisions. Making the entire process more fun and social directly translates into more sales and fewer returns, as the shopper is much likelier to feel confident and happy with their purchases.”

70% of shopping carts are abandoned, but we know that our social circles have real impact on whether we proceed with those purchases

There are also sizable opportunities for retailers in leveraging Big Data, andMarkelligent, another startup from the UKLTH delegation, creates smart solutions implementing and integrating software, hardware and data analytics in its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering. Brate, on the other hand, uses this type of insight to create a compelling consumer offering, by connecting the offline and online shopping experiences. Consumers can discover the hottest places to eat, drink, shop or visit based on what online users are searching for in over 120 cities.

The company uses big data analytics to identify the hottest trends and respond to customer’s needs and wants in real time, allowing retailers to offer consumers exactly what they want, where and when they want it.

“Brate brings together the best aspects of online and offline shopping in one platform. It transforms the retail experience by giving consumers much more choice, and brings a welcome boost to the high street by connecting outlets with impulse buyers.” said Managing Partner Shadi Tabbara

Connecting the real and virtual shopping worlds is a powerful proposition
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The service, which is available on web, iOS and Android, launched in San Francisco last August, followed by London in October, and has seen traffic triple in a year to 1.3 million.

“After launching in London last year, we’re excited to unlock the full potential of the UK market to help us expand the service,” said Tabbara.

According to recent figures from the IMRG, by 2021 UK consumers will spend more online than in the high street, but innovations such as these brought by the UKLTH start-ups shows how much room there still is for improving the shopping experience for both consumers and retailers.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Big Data and Big Ideas appeared first on Tech Trends.

Training the Next Generation of Surgeons with Augmented Reality

Alice — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 16:02:10 +0000

Two-thirds of the world’s population don’t have access to safe surgery. That’s as many as 5 billion people.

And of the 313 million procedures undertaken globally every year, only 6% occur in the poorest areas where over one third of the world’s population lives.

To cope with this huge problem, it is estimated that by 2030 we will need to train over 1.27 million additional surgical providers, which of course presents some enormous logistical and financial challenges.

Proximie is a start-up looking to solve this problem with an Internet-enabled software tool that allows doctors to guide, help, support and train surgeons through the use of Augmented Reality. According to its Co-founder Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, the key advantage it offers is that it’s much more interactive than traditional simulation or live streaming tools, thus enabling higher levels of collaboration and better learning outcomes.

Two thirds of the world’s population don’t have access to safe surgery
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The Augmented environment is created by overlaying two live video feeds, one in the surgical theatre filming the operation, the other pointing to a blank surface connected to the surgeon’s tablet or laptop. This allows the surgeon to draw on their screen while looking at the live surgery feed, and for the remote team to see the marks made by the surgeon and follow them precisely at their end.

Surgery is a very visual so it’s far more useful, interesting and engaging to watch it live
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They are one of the companies being supported in their rapid growth by the UK Lebanon Tech Hub and have been attracting significant praise and attention from both the scientific and technology communities, winning the prestigious Royal Society of Medicine prize for Innovation in e-Health and being invited to join the MIT “Arab World Meets Silicon Valley” forum at TechCrunch Disrupt in September.

Dr. Hachach-Haram, a Lebanese surgeon based in the UK is passionate about the use of the software as a training aid for students:

When we had the old-fashioned viewing galleries, dozens of students were able to watch surgery without affecting or crowding the surgical area, and could engage with the surgeon and ask questions,” She recalls. “Fast-forward to 2016, where we have much smaller operating theatres, reduced facilities and overstretched operating lists- this environment is much less amenable to surgical education and engagement from medical students.

So Proximie is effectively updating that viewing gallery experience using 21^st Century technology, so that a large number of students can log in and watch a procedure from wherever they are in the world.

Surgery is a very visual, precise and anatomical part of medicine and no matter how many times one reads it in a book, it’s always far more useful, interesting and engaging to be able to watch it live, ask questions, and visualise anatomy and pathology.

In September they will launch a pilot in partnership with UCL’s Royal Free Hospital to integrate Proximie into their surgical curriculum. The educational version of the platform also has a student dashboard function, which allows them to access elements relevant to their educational curriculum, giving the ability to take notes and screenshots for later review, for example.

A cohort of students will be given access to the platform and will be able to log in to a number of operating theatres to observe the surgeries in an interactive way with the added elements of annotation, AR and other great features that will make this a completely new way of learning.

This cutting -edge technology (no pun intended) includes features such as the ability to annotate live streams and medical records integration, meaning doctors can easily access information about a patient during surgery and take snapshots during the procedure which are automatically added to that patient’s records.

Proximie is hardware agnostic and requires minimal infrastructure, working with any tablet, smartphone or laptop and providing an intuitive interface with no need for expensive tools. Surgeons can literally use AR to draw on their screen using something as simple and affordable as a capped bic pen.

Proximie's cutting -edge technology includes the ability to annotate live streams and medical records integration
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This technology could have a significant impact in the quality of care provided to patients in conflict zones such as Gaza and Syria. The software allows an experienced surgeon to be virtually “parachuted in” to support and guide a procedure with their specialist expertise, without any of the danger and cost of physical travel.

There are, of course, some logistic challenges associated with live streaming technology, as anybody who’s ever been on a pixelated Skype call knows. Dr Hachach-Haram says that in situations where in remote areas or conflict zones they have modified the application so that it will still provide high quality video stream even at lower network speeds. “It’s an all-round adaptive solution, and while we’re a commercial platform, we’re also committed to social impact projects, as that’s a core component of our DNA. Proximie offers free licences to charities to support them in tackling inequality in surgical knowledge and expertise.”

Currently the telesurgery feature needs to be scheduled in advance, but future iterations are already planned where the service will host a database of surgeons all over the world listed according to expertise, allowing colleagues to check their availability and seek assistance and advice in real time.

Even in developed countries such as the UK, the potential for this type of technology to maximize efficiency is enormous, as surgeons would be able to support procedures in different hospitals without the time and costs associated with commuting to various locations. It would also ensure better patient care, as the best specialist for a particular procedure could support it regardless of their geographical location at any given time.

Even in countries such as the UK, the potential for this technology to maximise efficiency is enormous
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Dr. Hachach-Haram says they will be watching the developments in the Virtual Reality market with interest, and it is not difficult to imagine how, as VR technology and hardware become more accessible and pervasive, it will offer even greater possibilities for immersive learning and expertise sharing.

Virtual and Augmented Reality certainly represent a booming sector, and there is a growing interest in the medical applications for these technologies. According to a recent report from Frost & Sullivan the next 10 years are set to redefine the future of both business and consumer processes and interactions and will be adopted widely across industries by 2025.

“AR and VR will be a giant step in transforming and democratising education and businesses, especially in medicine, where immersive technology can facilitate education and access-at-a-distance for medical care,” said Dr Rafael Grossmann, who was the first person to stream a live surgical procedure with Google Glass, and his company Medical Realities, led by colleague Dr Shafi Ahmed, live-streamed the first VR surgery from The Royal London Hospital, with 54,000 viewers virtually present in the operating theatre.

From all around the world, they gained an exclusive point-of-view demonstration and interacted in real-time with the surgical event. Imagine how this level of interaction can deliver next-generation education for students worldwide, especially in developing countries, added Dr Grossmann.

There are also interesting developments in the hardware arena, with Georgian start-up InGlove developing a VR glove which could prove useful for applications such as medical simulations, and Purdue University researching a system called DeepHand, which uses a “convolutional neural network” that mimics the human brain and is capable of “deep learning” to understand the hand’s nearly endless complexity of joint angles and contortions. It uses a depth-sensing camera to capture the user’s hand and figure out where the hands and fingers are, applying algorithms to then replicate those motions in real time. Karthik Ramani, director of the University’s C Design Lab says that in Virtual Reality it is crucial for your hands to be able to accurately interact with the virtual world in order to provide full immersion.

Imagine how this level of interaction can deliver next-generation education for students worldwide
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It will be interesting to see how immersive tech develops and find new applications across areas such as medicine and education, and many agree that this will be the crucial factor in determining how quickly VR becomes pervasive.

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Training the Next Generation of Surgeons with Augmented Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

Bringing Education into the Social Graph

Alice — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:35:16 +0000

Now more than ever, we need a dedicated and secure social network for students.

If you want to get Education Technology right, you start by listening to teenagers
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With15-year-old triplets of his own, Tony Feghali, CEO and Co-Founder of Skoolee doesn’t seem to have much choice. However, he also goes out of his way to create informal focus groups and find out what the kids are finding cool these days.

“It’s amazing what insight you can get just by buying a few rounds of frappuccinos. That’s when we knew we were on the right track with Skoolee,” he recalls.

At 53, he’s not exactly a ‘digital native’ and he believes that is part of what makes him such a good listener

“I’m pretty much from the punch card machines era, complete with Blinking CRT black/white monitors with beep beep beep…” he laughs. “

So I can really appreciate the power that technology has in transforming people’s lives, and having been involved in Education for decades now, I can see how EdTech will help us shift to a different model, one that focuses on coaching rather than teaching, deliverables and goals instead of being restricted by subjects. We need to build our tools and platforms to fit into and to facilitate this new reality for students, educators and institutions.”

As it turned out, those teenagers he spoke to were not using Facebook all that much. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thought of sharing a social network with their parents didn’t strike them as particularly cool. While praising Instagram’s rich visuals and the immediacy of WhatsApp, they – like a lot of us – struggled to draw the line between personal and public, between their academic life and their social circle.

I can really appreciate the power that technology has in transforming people’s lives
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“Young people understand that what they do online can have long-term implications in the real world, and they felt there was really nowhere for them to showcase the things they were proud of, their academic achievements and interests, and as their thoughts turned towards university, this very clear idea emerged of how useful it would be to have a social platform dedicated solely to building their student profile, in the same way as we build a professional profile on LinkedIn.”

Young people understand that what they do online can have long-term implications in the real world
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Skoolee, which is launching its Beta in February, will be available on web and as a free mobile app combining social network functionalities with productivity tools to help young people get more organised and document their achievements as they evolve.

“We’re helping students build a dynamic ‘brag sheet’, something they can be proud to show their teachers, university admissions officers and even future employers,” says Feghali.

We’re helping students build something they can be proud to show teachers, admissions officers and employers
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The platform will also offer the ability for students to track their progress and compare it with that of their friends, or with others around the world:

“We’re updating the whole PenPal experience. We know that people are inspired by these exchanges, and that the competitive element can also be a great motivator for students to achieve their full potential. All of that is facilitated by the right social environment, and technology can extend it beyond traditional geographical boundaries.”

We’re updating the whole PenPal experience
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A recent report by the Harvard Graduate School of Education entitled Turning the Tide strongly makes the case for students to document their extracurricular involvement, and indeed one of the biggest challenges in the University admission process has been that standardized tests simply don’t provide the full picture when it comes to a student’s potential. It is widely agreed that there is a pressing need to find better ways of evaluating students on criteria that go beyond testing.

“Think about Oxbridge, for example,” Says Feghali. “There is much criticism around accessibility and the fact that pupils from less privileged or minority backgrounds don’t get the necessary training to comfortably navigate the interview process, so they often don’t do themselves justice in talking about their accomplishments – awards, leadership, volunteering, arts, music, sports, etc.

“But what if the person in charge of interviewing had access to this amazing evolving portfolio? It would give students a much fairer hearing and help to level out the playing field a little,” Feghali believes.

What if the person in charge of interviewing had access to this amazing evolving portfolio?
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There are also implications that continue beyond education, which is why major technology platforms have been trying to crack this elusive market for a while now. Still, only about 8% of US high school students have a profile on LinkedIn. Feghali is confident he has the answer:

“We’re planning to build cross-platform integration into Skoolee, so that as students move through higher education and join the workforce they can migrate seamlessly to LinkedIn or any other network they wish. Your social profile is a valuable commodity, and you need to invest in it over the long term, share and display it, just like you do with your diplomas.”

Your social profile is a valuable commodity, and you need to invest in it over the long term
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Skoolee is launching in the UK supported by the UK Lebanon Tech Hub, an initiative backed by the UK government and funded by Lebanon’s Central bank designed to provide promising technology startups in the country with a launchpad to accelerate their growth and global expansion.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

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