U.K. Doctors Use Mixed Headsets to Reduce Contact with Covid-19 Patients

(AP) Imperial College Healthcare, which operates five hospitals across London, is carrying out pioneering work - using Microsoft's HoloLens 2 headset to treat COVID-19 patients.

The high-tech headset uses augmented reality technology to seemingly place computer graphics - such as scans and X-rays - into a doctor's real-world view.

But, crucially, the headset's camera can also can also send a live video-feed of what the clinician sees to a computer screen in a low-risk area, where colleagues can interact and provide treatment advice, as if they were stood side-by-side.

"We've been working on that technology for about three and a half years because you can augment the view that the surgeon sees with imaging or X-rays or CTs, and that's very useful, it makes for safer surgery," explains consultant surgeon Dr. James Kinross.

"In COVID-19, we've been using it to bring multidisciplinary teams to the patient's bedside and to keep our colleagues safe when they're treating patients in COVID-19 environments by reducing the number of doctors that need to be at the bedside."

Doctors say in the wards trialing the technology it reduced the amount of time staff spent in high-risk areas - around 50 hours per-week per-team.

It also helped reduce the demand for vital personal protective equipment (PPE), with fewer staff having to enter COVID wards - saving around 700 items of PPE per-ward, per-week.

More importantly, Dr. Kinross says the technology also helped them work much more efficiently.

"Because we didn't have three or four doctors going on a ward round pushing a computer, we could work much more efficiently, make decisions faster and order tests and investigations faster. So, we probably saved about a third of the typical ward around time per ward round," he says.

This isn't the first use of mixed reality headsets in a clinical setting. The technology has been used to teach medical students. Surgeons have experimented with the technology for years. Last year, doctors in Italy trialed the technology to view CT and MRI scans as floating holograms.

But how did patients respond? Dr. Kinross says the tech allows there to still be a doctor in the room, during what can be a lonely and frightening experience.

"Patients that we use the device with actually respond very well to it, because there was always a doctor at their bedside, communicating and talking," says Dr. Kinross.

"A major problem with COVID-19 is actually the isolation that it causes. Our patients in this hospital can't see their relatives, they can't see their loved ones, at a really frightening time in their lives. And what we are interested in is using this technology perhaps to try and break down some of those barriers."

Microsoft says other hospital trusts across the UK are also adopting the technology.

One drawback may be the cost - Kinross says each headset costs around 3,000 British pounds. But he says those costs can be offset by PPE savings and increased efficiency.

Britain has suffered Europe's worst coronavirus outbreak, with more than 44,600 confirmed dead, the third-highest total in the world behind the United States and Brazil.

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