<div class="page photo" style=""> <article> <header style=" background-image:url(/imageLibrary/7K0A0664_12924.JPG); "> <div class="box"> <div class="intro" style="color: #ff7f2a;"> <h1 style="color: #ff7f2a !important;">What's New</h1> <p class="summary"></p> </div> </div> </header> <div class="main"> <div class="container"> <p class="byline"> </p> <h4><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/google-glass-gets-a-second-life-in-the-er" target="_blank">Google Glass Gets a Second Life in the ER</a></h4><p>May 25, 2016 by Mergan Scudellari</p><p><img src="/uploads/5748339cf4082.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><p>Photo : University of Massachusetts Medical School</p><p>Google Glass, despite its dramatic 2012 unveiling via a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7TB8b2t3QE">live skydiving demo</a>, never became a consumer hit, and Google stopped selling the device in January 2015.</p><p>Now, a team of doctors at the University of Massachusetts Medical School may have discovered a killer app for the device—performing emergency medicine consultations. Glass, it turns out, enables off-site specialists to reliably and accurately observe and diagnose patients in real-time. It may even help first responders triage victims in disaster scenarios.</p><p>Hospitals have tried using Glass before. Some efforts involved projecting medical records into a doctor’s field of view, but physicians found the display to be too small to sort through charts and data, <a href="http://sri.sagepub.com/content/23/2/156">among</a> <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/ijcp.12688/asset/ijcp12688.pdf?v=1&t=ioljfiqw&s=fbb9a7ee00873fe22bcc8013eff58b29d3a0610d">other concerns</a>.</p><p>Peter Chai, Kavita Babu, and Edward Boyer, medical toxicologists and emergency medicine physicians at UMMS, hypothesized that it might be more useful to use Glass to send data <em>out</em> rather than pulling it in. “As an emergency physician, you’re really busy and you end up making decisions with your specialists very quickly,” says Chai. “A lot of those times you’re talking to your specialist over the phone, and they’re just hearing verbal descriptions. Everybody wants to be there to see the patient.”</p><p>Telemedicine has been gaining popularity in healthcare, yet it typically consists of a computer and camera affixed to a bulky cart rolled from exam room to exam room. A simple head-mounted device with a camera and connectivity, on the other hand, is unobtrusive at the bedside and transmits live, first person images to a specialist anywhere.</p><p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/google-glass-gets-a-second-life-in-the-er" target="_blank">Read more</a></p><h4></h4><h4><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/robotics/medical-robots/autonomous-robot-surgeon-bests-human-surgeons-in-world-first" target="_blank">Autonomous Robot Surgeon Bests Humans in World First</a></h4><p>Posted 4 May 2016 by Eliza Strickland</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Uc5b0bxbSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><p>Photo : Robotic surgeon more precise than humans</p><p>In a robotic surgery breakthrough, a bot stitched up a pig’s small intestines using its own vision, tools, and intelligence to carry out the procedure. What’s more, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) did a better job on the operation than human surgeons who were given the same task.</p><p>STAR’s inventors don’t claim that robots can replace humans in the operating room anytime soon. Instead they see the accomplishment as a proof of concept—both for the specific technologies used and for the general concept of “supervised autonomy” in the OR.</p><p>Pediatric surgeon <a href="http://childrensnational.org/research-and-education/about-cri/faculty-and-leadership-directory/peter-kim">Peter Kim</a>, one of the researchers, didn’t sound threatened when he spoke to reporters in a press call yesterday. “Even though we surgeons take pride in our craft at doing procedures, to have a machine that works with us to improve outcomes and safety would be a tremendous benefit,” he said.</p><p>For <a href="http://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aad9398">this study</a>, published today in the journal <em>Science Translational Medicine</em>, researchers programmed their robot to carry out a procedure called <a href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002231.htm">intestinal </a><a href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002231.htm">anastomosis</a>, in which a piece of intestine that’s been cut through is stitched back together. It’s like repairing a garden hose, said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-decker-66026325">Ryan Decker</a>, the senior engineer on the team, in that the sutures must be tight and regularly spaced to prevent leaks. STAR performed this task both on <em>ex vivo</em> tissue in the lab and on <em>in vivo</em> tissue in an anesthetized pig, and experienced human surgeons were given the same tasks. When the resulting sutures were compared, STAR’s stitches were more consistent and more resistant to leaks. </p><p>The robot did have a little help. In about 40 percent of its trials, the researchers intervened to offer guidance of some sort—as in the GIF above, where a human hand is seen holding the thread. In the other 60 percent of trials, STAR did the job completely on its own. </p><p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/robotics/medical-robots/autonomous-robot-surgeon-bests-human-surgeons-in-world-first" target="_blank">Read more</a></p> </div> </div> </article> </div><!-- /page-->