In many telemedicine applications, the correct use of medical device at the point of need is essential to provide an appropriate service. Some applications may require untrained people to interact with medical devices and patients: care delivery in transportation, military actions, home care and telemedicine training.
Currently, healthcare systems across the world are experiencing perfect storms of external and internal care delivery challenges. These include overburdened doctors, declining reimbursements, rising care delivery costs, increased risk to patients and care providers, and poor health outcomes. The use of smart technology in telemedicine provides the healthcare industry with ways to mitigate these challenges by leveraging advanced innovations.
Telemedicine and all types of mixed reality (MR), such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) go along very well.
AR-enhanced telemedicine tools can also be used for better diagnostic collaboration among medical professionals. Telehealth platforms, like XRHealth, that have AR support allow clinicians to share the 3D images of their cases during virtual consultations with other professionals.
Recently, there is a growing interest about Augmented Reality in medicine. The main applications of AR are in the field of surgery, rehabilitation and teaching/training. Interventional medicine, surgery, laparoscopy and other procedures (e.g. needle biopsy) can be assisted by integrating preoperative and intraoperative anatomic and functional data improving the visual perception of the surgeon. Obviously, surgery AR applications require very accurate registration and camera calibration. AR and virtual reality have long since found use in rehabilitation and particularly in neurorehabilitation, by guiding and aiding the patient to perform therapy. Teaching and training of students or physicians can take great advantage by AR, which can be further enriched with direct haptic and auditory feedback. Superimposition in real time of images from US, CT or MR scans can also help in learning
The capability of AR to provide live support to users in operating on instrumentations is also of interest for this study. AR can support and guide workers in operating, actuate, disassembling and maintaining complex devices or systems. As example, it was proposed a mixed reality environment aimed to improve the effectiveness of servicing and repair procedures in mission critical systems, while reducing the time required for the intervention. Also technicians with no previous experience on specific, complex devices were able to perform an assigned maintenance task when supported by the AR application. In maintenance activities there are well-defined sequences of procedures to be done in a relatively static environment. These features allow a defined design space, supporting a wide variety of systems and technologies. It was proved effective in supporting workers for maintenance activities
