El Rincon del Dr. KakaWate

* Note: I give a small introduction for those unaware of AR/VR. If you are here to find out about options to start recording experiences for VR jump to the last paragraph 😉

As Moore’s law continues to predict the tremendous advancements in technology, our imagination and creativity is becoming the essential catalyst in converging them to target particular goals. In order for people to understand the potential of Moore’s law I recommend for people to imagine where they would be in 30 linear steps or in 30 exponential steps. Here is a slide I made.
      One of the beauties of Innovation is that exciting ideas arise when we mix different fields. A perfect example of such is Pumps & Pipes. P&P is an association of Medical, Energy, Aerospace, Academic, Community professionals and leaders that brings together professional groups who may not otherwise have the opportunity to interact for the transfer of knowledge and technology knowhow.The ability to see beyond a particular profession and understand that we can incorporate methods, processes, theories of different ones into our own is what ignites the innovation spark.

When Google Glass came out, it was called an explorer program for a reason. It was meant to allow particular dreamers to use the technology in different ways. In my case I quickly applied it to the Medical Realm. Using augmented reality to help bystanders give efficient CPR we created “CPRGLASS” A few months later, we demonstrated that potential it had in TeleMentoring medical procedures. “Visionary–Google Glass Moves From Concept To Clinical Care”.

Since then I have been trying to incorporate Augmented Reality in different settings. Experimenting with different smartglasses (Atheer Labs, META glasses, ODG) has been important and each one has its strengths and weaknesses. Without a doubt there is tremendous potential in Augmented Reality but technology is moving in a very fast pace and therefore choosing a technology that has the least resistance for implementation is crucial to make the innovation process more exciting and less of a hurdle jumping scenario.

This is the reason why focusing on Virtual Reality was an intuitive approach. The concept of AR/VR is not new and has been explored since 1968 with the creation of “The Sword of Damocles” by Ivan Sutherland. Since then, it has been following Moore’s law which has allowed a device that was so heavy that needed to be suspended from the ceiling to a normal pair of glasses. Below is “The Sword of Damocles” (and you thought glass looked weird)

There are many different options of VR headset and they will continue to grow. (This is a good List)  In addition eye tracking options are now being created and FOVE is one of them (still in Kickstarter and met funding goals in less than 3 days)

 How can we use Virtual Reality to improve Patient Care?

Many options exist regarding applications of Virtual Reality in Healthcare; Psychology/Psychiatry, Meditation, Medical Education. As someone who enjoys videogames (by the way your average gamer is 35 years old now) I have always dreamed of incorporating a fun experience to learning and Virtual Reality, in my opinion is just the way to do it. Initially it would be easier to record it and in the future to create a Computer Generated Interphase that we could interact with. This is why I explored recording a 360 immersive experience with the help of Jaunt VR to film 2 cases. More on this can be found here “Using Virtual Reality in Interventional Cardiology”

As I presented the findings people have asked how it is that they could create such videos. Well, Moore’s law is allowing everyone to do this now and a lot of news has been unraveled with the last Google I/O conference. Relevant to the subject is the Google Jump. Jump is an entire ecosystem for creating virtual reality video. As Clay Bavor, Google’s vice president of product, detailed on stage Jump consists of three parts: 1) the camera rig itself 2) software that automatically assembles and processes the footage, and 3) the player.

Virtual Reality now has the attention of a lot of people since this has happened and many have been asking me ways to capture 360 immersive experiences since not many have the opportunity have work with a company like Jaunt VR (which I am very grateful).

With the recent acquisition of Kolor by GoPro it seems that the consumer approach to capture Virtual Reality relies on using several GoPro cameras and it is not as expensive as you may think.

Options

• Google Jump Rig
• Freedom 360
• 360 Heros
  • Below is what a Setup could look like

Once the setup is assembled, platforms like jump will allow consumers to stich and assemble the footage to later share with the world. The beauty of this is that experiencing the footage will be accessible to millions of people. Basically anyone with a smartphone will be able to do so if they have something like GoogleCardboard.

The impact that this can have on different fields is only limited by the individual’s creativity. At the moment I am exploring this for medical education, but as we start exploring and the technology continues to evolve we will see the convergence of this technology with ubiquitous networking, robotics, sensors and haptic feedback which will initially enrich our learning experience and in the future could potentially have a keyrole in medical interventions/procedures.

Talking about Convergence, I am beginning to explore the capacity of EchoPixel. It is an amazing empowering technology that goes hand in hand with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. More about it can be found in this Wired article “Holograms Will Let Doctors See 3-D Views of Our Insides” as well as this one published in Newsweek “Bringing Virtual Anatomy to the Operating Room” 

My recommendation to everyone would be get GoogleCardboard now. It is available for both Android and iOS. Once you experience it then you will understand the potential and depending on your profession you might find exciting uses for it which are now becoming widely available! Good Luck!

Relevant to this is an interview with Michael Gibson on AR/VR