Today in health, it apple vision pro one health systems take. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system. And creator of this week health, a set of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection at a time. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders. Short test artist site interprise health. Parlance certified health, notable and service.

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We don't keep a nickel of it. So love to have you be a part of that. Go ahead and reach out today. We still have some spots at hymns and at Vive. All right. One last thing, share this podcast with a friend or colleague you said as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions. On topics that are relevant to you in the industry. A form of mentoring. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. One last thing.

It is Thursday. And this is the last podcast I'm going to do for the week. A couple of reasons. One is I'm still sick. And I'm getting on a plane and about two hours, and I'm not going to have time to record a second today episode. Normally I would say, Hey, I'll just record it when I get there. And if I was feeling better, I know I would do that. But I'm not feeling better, so you'll have to. I don't know. You know what the easiest thing to do would be to go over to the conference channel because I'm dropping an episode on the conference channel, and it's a good episode.

You can listen to that. And you can get your bill fix and send me emails. Oh, by the way, I'm keep getting emails on that topic of it staff commoditization. And the article of reducing it staff. Very dynamic conversation going on. And there's two very real camps on this. It's a conversation we are going to continue to have on the show because that's what we want to do.

We want to bring this to light, have the conversation. I get the pros and cons your health system might decide to do one thing. Another might decide to do another. But I did the latest string of emails is essentially. This is because we work remote. And if we didn't work remote, this would not be happening. Out of sight, out of mind.

And I might touch on that. I don't disagree with that completely. In fact, when I coach. When I coach especially younger people and they're like I get to work remotely. I'm like, is there any opportunity for you to go into the office? And if they say yes, I tell them, go into the office. You will get promoted by default because you are there. And one of the people has gotten promoted twice since the pandemic started because they were in the office.

I kid you not, I had, I'm not. He's doing a great job. But. Proximity. He was assigned projects because he was there just because they walked out and said, Hey, we need somebody to give this project to while he's in the office, bring him over. And he got assigned some projects and got multiple promotions. Just by being there and out of sight out of mind is a thing. Right or wrong blame, whoever you want to blame.

It's just a thing. It's just the way the world works. There's some truth to it and no, no reason to deny it. Just figure out. How to manage in the midst of it. All right. This is from an article San Diego union Tribune. If you wonder. Why they are covering sharp healthcare it's because it's San Diego newspaper. Is Apple's new vision pro a healthcare machine, sharp healthcare thinks so. So the vision pro was released.

I think April 2nd, it came out. We have all sorts of reviews starting to come in. I went out to Reddit and subreddit on it and watch. Some of them were funny, is it some idiots are walking around on the streets with them on, and by the way, I think that is the future of these things. I think they will be integrated into normal glasses. Into the future.

I think, Allah, Google glass, we're going to see. Apple continue as the technology gets there. I think we will. C, the glasses I'm wearing on my face today, we'll have all sorts of augmented reality and apple will be ahead of the game. But I think walking around with these things today. Is, I don't know.

It just it's, it'll take some getting used to. And so there's pictures of people walking across the street in some cities. Just excuse me, but it doesn't make the potential practical application of this any less real. Let me give you a little bit of the article only just released to the public Apple's new vision pro headset can already be used to display medical records, filling a doctor's field of view with anything from graphs of the patient blood pressure over time. To the results of their latest chest.

X-ray okay. This is not rocket science. When you using the vision pro you can actually connect it to your Mac and pull up the screen for your Mac and interact with it. And so it's just essentially what they're saying is, oh my gosh, you could put it on a large screen. In this virtual reality, augmented reality kind of situation. Yes, you can do that. Let's see the expensive new technology and it is expensive.

I did price went out. I went through the process of price. Went out. I think the one I was looking at was I did not buy one, but I think it was like 3,800 bucks or something like that. C it was it. To be honest with you. I am an early adopter on most technology, especially the apple tech. I could not, I looked at the shopping basket.

I couldn't pull the trigger on it. Not enough practical application for me, even though I like to play around with this stuff ahead of time. So I can talk to people about it. We'll see if it's in our future, but anyway, expensive new technology with its ultra high resolution screens for each eye and multiple cameras for hand and eye tracking. Brings a new level of precision to a realm that up to this point has mainly been the domain of video games.

It remains to be seen whether Apple's latest innovation will have what it takes to usher in a new era of virtual reality. I'm going to get out of it. Sharp healthcare. So a spacial computing center of excellence. They have set up now getting underway at sharp healthcare in San Diego. Aims to find out if there's going to be practical application sharp just took delivery of 30 vision pros sets, giving them to healthcare workers, doing all sorts of jobs. Interestingly in and of itself.

Excuse me. That's interesting to have itself. I like that concept of, I don't know, it looks interesting. The technology looks interesting. Let's put it into the hands of the workers and see how they use it. All right. Apple is pitching this new product that spatial computing device, one capable of projecting one sigil work and entertainment across a broad virtual landscape.

Either transporting a person to a. Digital domain or overlaying information on a person's immediate surroundings. Sharp is working with epic, the industry leader. EHR has, how vision pro might be used in the healthcare setting. Let's see. What does it say here? Dan Exley. is the person from sharp sharps, vice president of clinical systems.

He's the one who's talking here. VR headsets allow people to view information differently than they have in the past. And there's a big difference between different and better, right? So it's different. He's acknowledging it's different. We're not sure if it's better yet, but that's what they're aiming to find out.

Sharp's focus. He said we'll be doing rigorous comparisons of all the new ways of getting healthcare work done, trying to identify which tasks proved better on the headset. We've invested in enough devices, so that right away. We have physicians and nurses and informaticist and software developers and others. To start using it actually said we want them to work with us to figure out which task and workflow is best for.

I like this approach. There's going to be a lot of hype. There's going to be a lot of, oh, I want to seem like I'm above this and you're going to rip the person who's walking across the street and oh, these are stupid. And we're going to call them. Glass holes like we did with the Google glass, but there was some real practical applications of Google glass and healthcare. Which eventually came out, but there was a stigma attached to it because it's very different.

They're pushing through that segment. If it adds value, they will adopt it. I liked just like the testing nature of it. I liked the scientific nature of it. Let's do a series of hypotheses around how it will be used. Let's test those hypotheses. Let's see. What the results are of those tests. Let's see vision pro it uses internal cameras and whatnot.

You can actually see through it and see the area around you pretty well. I saw a video where a person had somebody throw them a ball and they caught the ball. So clearly there's enough of a vision aspect of it that you can. Respond to the work environment around you. But this technology is flexible enough that many are already suggesting less obvious ways.

It might be used tasks where a single person must monitor a myriad of situation. Seems. Like a good place to start. Think of your nurses in a command center. Being able to see five. Excuse me, five or six screens and monitor those screens. Now they will have to be comfortable. And I understand that they are very comfortable. And there is a fitting process that you have to go through. In order to make sure you get the right fitting. They take into account glasses and you could have inserts put in those kinds of things, but you could have those people who are monitoring. Those situations You could have them with these kinds of headsets and be looking at a lot of different things, feeds potentially from the cameras you have in the room, as well as the vitals. And those kinds of things. Let's see. Anesthesiologists monitor a ton of information in real time.

Vital signs, EKG. Way forums, et cetera actually said, one idea is to put these readouts into the headset and have them appear around on an. And that's the size patient's head. If the headset was set. To use its outward facing cameras to pass through a view to the real world. Allowing information to be overlaid on top. Now you're able to just keep your eyes on the patient. You're not looking back constantly to see what the monitors are saying.

Now you're going to have those glasses on as you're talking to the patients. So again, we have to figure out what that feels like to the patient and what that environment is. Virtual reality has already made significant inroads into healthcare and is common technology used to deliver exposure therapy. To treat post traumatic stress disorder, allowing patients to experience traumatic triggers, gradually causing stress reductions. To become less intensive. And we've covered that on the show. Surgical teams are also starting to use augmented reality, overlapping digital images and real-world scenes to enhance medical procedures, UC San Diego health. Began such operations in 2021 using the technology and complex spinal operations to help project where mechanical fasteners. Would need to be placed, allowing surgeries to be performed more quickly.

Again, interesting use case studies are also beginning to show that virtual models, which can be shown in three dimensions are great for teaching medical professionals, complex anatomy. And for helping patients better understand medical procedures. They will experience. I would imagine if I were the head of a medical school right now. I would be figuring out how to get funding for a lot of these devices, because I believe there's going to be a lot of practical application. To getting people real world kind of experience. In a virtual setting. Ah, let's see.

On Monday morning, Sharp's new innovation center in Kearney. Mesa. Dr. Tommy Korn delighted in bringing up a three-dimensional model of a human heart. Rotating the digital muscle to show the different chambers and even how blood flows through different valves. Patients might be wondering whether they are sued to see a doctor coming into their exam or wearing the digital headset.

But Korn said wearing the headset during interactions with patients, generally doesn't make sense because doing so would reduce the amount of human interaction, but using VR to get a deep, deeper look at the patient's records. Before entering the exam room could be. A boon. So there you have it. Sharp healthcare, kudos to them. For getting out in front of this, doing some testing.

And I appreciate their forward-leaning approach to this. Again, lots of tests figure out if it works, they bought 30 devices. What are we talking about here? A hundred grand. To see where it might have practical application. If it doesn't, they burned a hundred grand, my guess is it's grant money anyway.

Or if it's some kind of funding that they receive from the state or federal level. For innovation. But if it is if it does have practical application, you could see potentially, new techniques, you could see more efficiencies and you could save that money pretty quickly, depending on what the application is.

So again, kudos to them. If you are listening to this, Hey, you know what? You could get one or two, give it to some doctors, see what they think. See if there's any practical application every CIO should have at least one or two physicians that they can get on the phone and say, Hey, you want to play around with us with me.

I'd like to see what we can do. I had And hopefully you have more than that, but at a minimum you should have one or two that you can call. And an innovation community that is early adopters, that would be more than happy to get their hands on one of these devices. All right. That's all for today.

And that's all for this week. Don't forget check out the conference channel this week. Health conference. We'll drop a keynote episode tomorrow. You can listen there and I will be at another 2 29 meeting this time in San Diego. And I will see some of these people from some of the health systems we talked about today. All right.

That's all for today. Don't forget. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague. You said as a foundation to continue the conversation. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Short test artist site interprise health. The parlance certified health, notable and 📍 service.

Now check them out at this week. Dot com slash today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.