Live-streamed surgeons

Healthcare is going digital, with fitness apps, wearable devices, and online medical consultations rising in popularity. Now even medical training is poised for a disruption: Surgeons are experimenting with immersive visual technologies that could provide realistic digital learning to medical students in remote locations.

“This technology will allow [doctors] to get help whenever required,” British colorectal surgeon Shafi Ahmed told Bloomberg. Last year, Ahmed used Snap Inc.’s Spectacles, a set of glasses equipped with high-resolution cameras, to walk student doctors and millions of other viewers through a hernia operation.

Ahmed also recently used Microsoft’s HoloLens headset to bring dozens of physicians into a “virtual” operating theater during an operation on a bowel cancer patient. He believes such immersive visual technologies can help meet the World Health Organization’s goal to eliminate a projected shortfall of 15 million healthcare workers by 2030.

According to Forbes, medical and educational institutions like Johns Hopkins and the Cleveland Clinic have increasingly used virtual-reality surgery simulations, such as those produced by Chicago-based ImmersiveTouch, to reduce surgical errors in training.

“The evidence appears to suggest that, on the whole, these technologies are likely to be equivalent to traditional modes of education,” Josip Car, a medical professor at Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University, told Bloomberg. “If this turns out to be so, that’s very good news because many of them allow scalability and flexibility of learning.”

Many of Ahmed’s colleagues, though, are not so sure that watching an operation will be an adequate substitute for interacting with real patients. And live-streaming such surgeries also creates potential privacy concerns. But Ahmed believes his approach will help to demystify surgery and make it more transparent.

London City Airport Andrew Matthews/Press Association via AP

Air to ground

One of the most visible features of any major airport is the air traffic control tower. But advances in video display technology and pressure to improve safety and reduce costs could make those iconic structures a thing of the past.

More and more airports are closing their physical control towers and building remote air traffic control centers—in some cases dozens of miles away from the airport—where air traffic control workers monitor flight traffic at multiple airports simultaneously using a system of video feeds.

London City Airport is the latest facility to upgrade to a virtual air traffic control system, according to Gizmodo. The airport is building a new control center 80 miles away in the town of Swanwick and will use a system of 14 high-definition cameras to give the controllers a detailed digital view of the entire airport.

Advocates say the new remote facilities improve safety and reduce costs. Huge video screens surrounding the controllers’ desks give an enhanced view of the airport, especially at night and in poor visibility. Backup cameras and dedicated video links ensure continuous coverage if one of the cameras or screens fails. But controllers will continue to use radar and voice communications as they do presently.

Norway has already consolidated control of 15 airports into one virtual control tower, according to The Economist, and the United States and Australia are testing virtual towers as well. —M.C.