Augmented Reality Is Here: 9 Real Applications In The Field Of Health

Augmented Reality : Although this technology has not completed its deployment in the field of medicine, there are several examples in which it has already proven its effectiveness.

Among its applications are assistance to surgery and graphic drug inserts. 

This technology also increases the effectiveness in the treatment of mental disorders.

Augmented reality is already something tangible in the world of health and medicine . This technology consists of improving the real world environment with virtual elements that complete it by providing complementary information. Augmented reality is unique because users do not lose contact with the real context in which they operate, and it makes information available to us almost immediately. 

Although this technology, like many other tools, has not yet been fully deployed in the world of health and medicine, there are several examples in which its use is already a reality:

Augmented Reality To Show Nearby Defibrillators

A Radboud University medical center in the Netherlands has designed an app called AED4EU that helps find automated external defibrillators to treat urgent cases of heart problems. 

This tool also allows its users to incorporate the location of new devices so that anyone can project the closest defibrillators through augmented reality. The user only has to open the application and follow the instructions it offers through their mobile phone. 

Google Glass To Help New Moms With Breastfeeding

An innovation company called Small World, in Melbourne (Australia), developed for several weeks a test that had Google Glass and the Australian Breastfeeding Association as protagonists. 

Through these glasses, the association’s experts were able to check the way in which new or inexperienced mothers breastfed their babies to detect failures and offer them help. Despite the help that this trial meant for all the participants, it was finally parked.

Improved Central Vision

In ophthalmology, an app called Oculenz , designed for people with central vision loss, allows doctors to correct the functional vision of patients with severe age-related macular degeneration and create a virtual environment that enables them to read again.

Location Of Veins

Augmented reality has contributed to overcoming one of the most painful situations that certain oncological and chronic patients have to suffer: unsuccessful punctures when searching for veins to inoculate a treatment. 

The AccuVein company  has designed a handheld scanner that is projected onto the skin to show the exact location of veins on a patient’s body. According to its promoters, the level of success is 3.5 times higher than if the punctures are made without assistance. 

More Entertaining And Educational Prospectuses For Medicines

Through augmented reality, pharmaceutical companies can forget the boring and long prospectuses and replace them with systems that graphically show how the drug works in the human body. 

Treatment Of Phobias And Mental Disorders

Augmented reality has made it possible to design immersive experiences to subject patients with mental illnesses to calculated stress situations to overcome situations of phobia, panic, anxiety, OCD, etc. 

Attendance At Surgery

This technology has become a support tool for surgery that provides greater doses of precision. Devices such as HoloLens from Microsoft manage to superimpose a layer of virtual information on reality or the vision of organs in 3D and even the vital signs of the patient. 

The Study Of The Human Body

The HoloAnatomy app  allows you to visualize the human body in an easy and spectacular way, and distinguish from the muscles to the smallest veins through a dynamic holographic model. 

Through this technology, medical students can study the functioning of the human body and the behavior of certain pathologies in a more dynamic and realistic way. 

Autism Treatment

This tool has brain science software and turns Google’s augmented reality glasses and other similar devices into a support to carry out educational challenges for people with autism.