virtual reality (VR)

See the following -

A Hologram Might Be Worth A Million Numbers

Kim Bellard | Blogspot: Kim Bellard Blog | November 24, 2014

I saw a fascinating article about how Fidelity, through their research arm Fidelity Labs, has released a virtual reality tool to portray financial information in a more visual manner -- not even using numbers.  I immediately thought about how this approach could apply to health care...

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A Tour of Google's 2016 Open Source Releases

Open source software enables Google to build things quickly and efficiently without reinventing the wheel, allowing us to focus on solving new problems. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and we know it. This is why we support open source and make it easy for Googlers to release the projects they're working on internally as open source. We've released more than 20-million lines of open source code to date, including projects such as Android, Angular, Chromium, Kubernetes, and TensorFlow. Our releases also include many projects you may not be familiar with, such as Cartographer, Omnitone, and Yeoman...

Asking Better Questions and Improving Patient Engagement

I've been thinking about questions. A few things I read helped spur this. The first was a blog post entitled "Asking the Wrong Questions" by Benedict Evans, of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Mr. Evans looked at a couple of long range technology forecasts (from as long ago as 1964 and as recently as 1990), and pointed out how they both managed to miss several key developments. He attributed this to "this tendency to ask the wrong questions, or questions based on the wrong framework." And we're still at it. Mr. Evans, whose background is mobile technologies, said that people are now doing a lot of speculating about what comes "after mobile," such as AR and VR...

Brain-Machine Interface Helps Paraplegic Patients Regain Some Feeling

Press Release | Duke Neurobiology | August 12, 2016

Eight people who have spent years paralyzed from spinal cord injuries have regained partial sensation and muscle control in their lower limbs after training with brain-controlled robotics, according to a study published Aug. 11 in Scientific Reports. The patients used brain-machine interfaces, including a virtual reality system that used their own brain activity to simulate full control of their legs. Videos accompanying the study illustrate their progress. The research -- led by Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., as part of the Walk Again Project in São Paulo, Brazil -- offers promise for people with spinal cord injury, stroke and other conditions to regain strength, mobility and independence.

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Is "Modern Medicine" Indistinguishable From Magic?

Evidently, most of health care's technologies are not yet sufficiently advanced. For example, just think about chemotherapy.  We've spent lots of money developing ever more powerful, always more expensive, hopefully more precise drugs to combat cancers.  In many cases they've helped improve cancer patients' lifespans -- adding months or even years of life.  But few who take them would say the drugs are without noticeable side effects -- e.g., patients often suffer nausea, vomiting, hair loss, fatigue, appetite loss, sexual issues, or a mental fog that is literally called "chemo brain."...

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Kitware Plans to Spotlight New VTK and ParaView Releases at SC16

Press Release | Kitware | October 25, 2016

On behalf of the development communities for the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and ParaView, Kitware detailed plans to release VTK 7.1 and ParaView 5.2 in its quarterly newsletter. According to the plans, the communities will finalize new versions of the open-source software solutions in time for The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC16)...

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Open Source Haptics Kit Aims To Democratize Force Feedback

Joshua Vasquez | Hackaday | February 2, 2015

If you’ve been keeping up with augmented and virtual reality news, you’ll remember that spacial haptic feedback devices aren’t groundbreaking new technology. You’ll also remember, however, that a professional system is notoriously expensive–on the order of several thousand dollars...

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Robot-Like Machines Helped People With Spinal Injuries Regain Function

Richard Harris | NPR | August 11, 2016

Scientists with the international scientific collaboration known as the "Walk Again Project" use noninvasive brain-machine interfaces in their efforts to reawaken damaged fibers in the spinal cord. Researchers in Brazil who are trying to help people with spine injuries gain mobility have made a surprising discovery: Injured people doing brain training while interacting with robot-like machines were able to regain some sensation and movement...

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The Most Important Health Care Jobs of the Future

Fast Company ran an interesting article The Most Important Design Jobs of the Future, predicting 18 of the most important design jobs of the future (at least 3 to 5 years out).  A couple of them were in health care, and arguably all of them would have some impact on health care, but I thought it might be fun to do a similar list specific to health care, and not limited to design. Let's hope no one comes back in a few years to show how wrong I was. I'll skip the usual suspects -- e.g., doctors, nurses, pharmacists.  Yes, those jobs will (almost) certainly still be around, but they may not be central as they are today.  And those jobs will evolve in ways that reflect the trends illustrated by the jobs I list...

Three Companies Using VR to Change the Future of Healthcare

Tonie Hansen | NVIDIA Blog | July 8, 2016

From pacemakers to Fitbits, digital technology plays a vital role in keeping people healthy. Now, some innovative companies are going beyond devices and gadgets by applying VR to expand the capabilities of the medical field. The same GPU technology used by game developers to animate lifelike VR versions of Mount Everest and Mars is being deployed to improve surgical training, more accurately diagnose disease and offer patients new avenues to pain relief. Here are three companies paving the way for VR in medicine using NVIDIA GPUs...

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Your Smartphone or Your Life...or, the Dangers of Addictive Technology

Rep. Jason Chaffetz's recent remarks suggesting that some Americans should invest in their health instead of in a new iPhone reminded me of nothing so much of the old Jack Benny bit, where Benny is accosted by a robber who threatens "your money or your life."  When Benny doesn't immediately respond, the robber prompts him, and the supposedly miserly Benny snaps back, "I'm thinking it over." I suspect that, like Mr. Benny, many of us would have a tough choice between our smartphones (and our other devices) and our health.  It may be not so that we're miserly as it is that we're addicted.