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Kinect In the Operating Room
colinneagle writes with an excerpt from Network World: "Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London began trials of a Kinect-driven camera last week that would sense body position, and by waving his or her hands, the surgeon can sift through medical images, such as CT scans or real-time X-rays, while in the middle of an operation. During surgery, a surgeon will stop and consult medical images anywhere from once an hour to every few minutes. So the surgeon doesn't have to leave the table, the doctor will work with assistants, but sometimes, if you want things done to your satisfaction, you have to do it yourself. Dr. Tom Carrell, a consultant vascular surgeon at Guy's and St Thomas', described an operation on a patient's aorta earlier this month to New Scientist. 'Up until now, I'd been calling out across the room to one of our technical assistants, asking them to manipulate the image, rotate one way, rotate the other, pan up, pan down, zoom in, zoom out.' With the Kinect, he says, 'I had very intuitive control.'"
"Siri, show me an X-Ray of Samuel Ray."
"Playing songs by... Sugar Ray."
"Siri, what allergies does Susan Fay have?"
"Let me see... Here are allergists near Santa Fe."
school needs to be the other way open book / open reference.
Do want people who can cram for tests and pass with no idea on how to do what it covers or people who what they doing and know how to look up stuff they need?
Even more so in a tech job memorising the Java AWT API So some PHB will hire some with a good GPA due to being good at taking tests vs some who did the work on there own or went to a test school where a test is more likely to cover real WORK.
Probably their X-Box people are the ones who developed it, so that was where its use originated. Also, starting w/ X-box starts it as something that is a great new toy which has lots of really useful industrial applications--it's much better marketing than making it a piece of medical or industrial equipment first.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Doesn't seem like they're "cheating" to me, if they're looking at images taken from the patient they are operating on.
FC Closer
As best I can tell, MS purchased the kinect technology with the relatively narrow objective of coming up with something that could beat the Wii's motion-gimmick factor without requiring a new generation of console. They didn't even do the traditional vapor-announce-to-discourage-competitors of a Windows SDK until well after they had finished losing their shit at the people who went ahead and made their own. I don't know if they got a good price from the guys they licensed it from, based on some agreement to limit the scope to cheap gaming stuff, or whether they were just feeling amazingly shortsighted...
It is more curious that the company that MS licensed the tech from hadn't been pushing it left, right, and center before the Kinect made headlines. Even if their lower-volume hardware was a few grand a pop, they could still have found plenty of buyers in markets where that is entirely reasonable.
...by waving his or her hands, the surgeon can sift through medical images, such as CT scans or real-time X-rays, while in the middle of an operation
I know that everyone has different UI proclivities, but I have trouble understanding this one.
Seems to me, the ideal interface would allow the surgeon to use it without removing their hands from their work, or wasting energy flailing their hands around to get the info they want, or moving their vision elsewhere, etc.
If voice control doesn't work for them, I'd suggest a set of foot pedals to keep their hands free. That works well for guitarists, who also have to make precision hand movements.
Also perhaps a heads-up display. That works for fighter pilots, who need to stay absolutely focused on task.
That said, since my life could be quite literally in a surgeon's hands, I want them to be as comfortable as possible with whatever UI they choose. So having another option is good. :)
First lesson about anatomy; there are no normal bodies. We are all individuals.
I drank what? -- Socrates
There's not a lot of certification to be done, to be brutally honest. In fact, none, it's not a medical device as such, since it's not used to actually operate on the patient. As for conking out, the surgeon should still be able to complete the procedure, or they may fall back to using assistants in the heat of the moment. Those are always available...
Of course, I'm only speaking as a layperson regarding the certification. But that's what would be logical, just spray the thing with a fast-evaporating disinfectant, and be done with it, it doesn't have to deal with the patient or the surgeon directly anyway...
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
We use perfectly normal computers with plain old keyboards and mice in ORs all the time. As long as it's not connected to the patient or being used for diagnosis or treatment, it's not a medical device. A certified diagnostic-grade monitor for a radiologist is a medical device, for example, but the monitors the rest of us use to look at films are nothing special.
We're "technologically backward" because most of the technical innovations don't decrease the amount of time it takes to do our work - they increase it. Those that do save time are rapidly and universally adopted (the best example of this I can think of is radiology software - because it saved every physician from having to go down to the reading room to look at films).
Why someone from the family now need to be present all the time during simple 10-minute knee surgery just because patient is having anesthesia?
Because you have to be discharged to the care of a responsible adult after having received general anesthesia, and because experience has shown that people who show up alone but "will have someone come to pick me up later" usually don't have anyone actually show up. Would you prefer that these people drive themselves home? Would you care to take on the liability for allowing them to do so? Thank your state and federal legislators for allowing the law to be used this way.
Screw you.
Whatever floats your boat.