In a pioneering feat in the United Kingdom, a team of surgeons used Apple’s latest virtual reality glasses technology to assist in carrying out a surgical procedure, as published by the British portal DailyMail.
At London’s Cromwell Hospital, a medical team used the advanced Vision Pro headset, valued at £2,700, to repair a patient’s spinal column.
During surgery, a nurse, working in collaboration with the surgeon, handled the augmented reality device. This equipment was essential for preoperative preparation, real-time monitoring of the procedure, and precise selection of the necessary surgical instruments.
Thanks to this innovative device, the medical team could visualize the real environment interspersed with floating virtual interfaces, which displayed data crucial to the success of the operation, a functionality known as augmented reality.
Currently, two National Health Service (NHS) funds are advancing negotiations with Exex, the American corporation responsible for developing artificial intelligence software, with a view to its future implementation. This strategic dialogue coincides with the groundbreaking surgery led by Dr. Syed Aftab, which took place two weeks ago, in a context where the Chancellor of the Exchequer recently emphasized the need for AI integration in the healthcare sector.
Jeremy Hunt, in his recent budget statement, announced a billion-dollar investment to upgrade the NHS’s information technology systems, with the aim of optimizing productivity and mitigating existing inefficiencies.
Apple’s Vision Pro, sold in the United States for US$3,500, was designed to provide a total immersive experience, whether playing video games or watching movies.
Suvi Verho, chief nurse at London Independent Hospital, said the technology was a “game changer”, adding: “It eliminates human error. Eliminates the guesswork. It gives you confidence in the surgery.”
The underlying artificial intelligence program not only meticulously documents each phase of the surgical procedure, but is also designed to, in the future, evaluate the effectiveness of the operation through a comparative analysis with other similar interventions carried out by different surgeons.
According to Dr. Aftab, the software has a revolutionary capacity: converting the inexperience of a nurse, who may have never collaborated with him before — a common situation — into an expertise comparable to that of a decade of professional practice.
He added that the technology would give his operations team a ‘superpower’, making them equivalent to a Formula One pit stop team, saying: “That’s the idea – it doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to a pit stop in your life. life. Just put on the headset.”
