“OK Glass: Hand Me The Scalpel, Please…” GoogleGlass During Surgery!

Rafael J. Grossmann | @ZGJR Blog | June 20, 2013

Obviously, the one of the MAIN concerns regarding the use of Google Glass during surgery, with live streaming of data, would be to take every measure and to ensure the privacy of the patient’s health information (PHI).

That’s exactly what I did. Not only I obtained informed consent about what we were going to attempt (and documented it), but most importantly, made sure that no recording or transmission of any identifying information was done. The streaming of video and photos, to “myself” thru Google Glass, did not reveal any PHI, or even show the patient’s face.

By performing and documenting this event, I wanted to show that this device and its platform, are certainly intuitive tools that have a great potential in Healthcare, and specifically for surgery, could allow better intra-operative consultations, surgical mentoring and potentiate remote medical education, in a very simple way.