Vuzix Corporation, a provider of smart glasses and augmented reality (AR) technology and products, in collaboration with Ohana One, a global surgical training nonprofit organization, has announced that the surgical aid and education virtual surgical sight smart glasses program for the NGO community is now live in 35 countries worldwide.
The Surgical Sight program, which was formally launched in October 2020 by Ohana One, utilizes Vuzix Smart Glasses and Help Lightning software to connect surgical mentors in developed areas with surgeons in developing areas around the globe to create training relationships within surgery. As of June 2021, 835 calls had been placed using Vuzix Smart Glasses, which were used to connect more than 100 surgeons across five specialty areas including neurosurgeons, general and colorectal surgeons, adult and pediatric orthopedic surgeons, and plastic and reconstructive surgeons. The first cohort consisted of 50 surgical teams made up of mentor and mentee pairs from 35 developing countries. According to Vuzix, the goal for the Surgical Sight program is to have it grow to 1,000 mentor/mentee pairs.
Surgical mentees are able to share their surgical field of view directly with a mentor, who sees what the mentee’s are seeing, live and in real-time thanks to the specialized Help Lightning smart glasses software. The technology can take pictures of the live feed, record videos, freeze the image and subsequently write on top of a captured image. Plus, the software allows mentors to use their hands to point out areas that need special attention or direction, all as if the mentor was directly operating with the mentee in live time. Vuzix stated that this helps to enhance the training relationship between the mentor and mentee, enabling those still learning to further develop their surgical skills.
“The main purpose of global surgery is training activities between the mentors and mentees. Because of many reasons from the different regions, time, local laws, restriction from transportation or COVID pandemic, the experts cannot come and teach us directly. The Vuzix Smart Glasses are becoming an important channel for communication. We can receive help from our mentors remotely. The glasses work similar to a smart camera with video call and virtual reality that are suitable in the operating room. We really like using these devices to improve the quality of our global surgical programs,” said Dr. Can from InterSurgeon, an Ohana One partner, Chief of Neurosurgical Department, Children’s Hospital 2 in Vietnam.
“We are very pleased to work together with Ohana One and their growing list of participating surgical teams around the globe to support their virtual Surgical Sight smart glasses program in their mission to connect 1,000 mentor/mentee pairs,” said Paul Travers, President and CEO of Vuzix.
For more information on Vuzix and its augmented reality smart glasses, please click here. To find out more about Ohana One, click here.
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Image credit: Ohana One
