Doctor out of town? No problem: they can be submitted as a 3D image.
Crescent Regional Hospital outside Dallas, Texas, is the first in the nation to offer doctor appointments with a holographic machine, allowing overworked medical specialists, who often have to visit multiple medical centers in a week and sometimes even a day, to see more patients.
It also comes with the added bonus of turning your usually dreary telehealth visit into something more lifelike and personal — though of course, none beat the real thing.
“I can see the three dimensions of the anesthesiologist’s head, legs and torso in lifelike detail,” wrote journalist Mark Dent about his holographic doctor experience in an article for Texas Monthly magazine. “Only the background – a white void – shows that she is not with us.”
The holographic device is called a Holobox, designed by the Dutch startup Holoconnect. The size of an oversized vending machine, the Holobox functions more or less as a huge booth that can display a life-size image of a doctor or anyone else making a call.
The holographs are created using a transparent LCD screen, which is virtually invisible, housed behind a layer of anti-reflective glass. As such, the images are not projected into 3D space, but instead create the illusion of three-dimensionality.
It’s not quite ‘Star Wars’, but the effect is apparently convincing. Dr. Olayinka Adepitan, the anesthesiologist interviewed by Texas Monthlycalled the technology a “game changer.” She found that patients were more attentive during her Holobox calls than during typical telehealth visits (such as over Zoom).
“The longer we talk, the more I forget that Adepitan is actually in a clinic in Farmers Branch, about 20 miles north,” Dent wrote.
As the first hospital to use the technology in this way, Crescent is currently using the Holobox for pre- and post-operative consultations. Adepitan told Texas Monthly that it allows her to discharge patients sooner than if she had to wait to drive to the province, a trip she will make only twice a week.
Thanks to the technology, Adepitan simply reports to the nearby medical center where she normally works and sits in front of a camera and a white screen to beam herself in remotely. She watches patients through a TV monitor while a local nurse physically examines the patient.
If Texas Monthly notes that rural areas across the country are chronically short of medical professionals. Rural Texas has seen dozens of hospital closures over the past decade. Among physicians, there is enthusiasm for telehealth, with or without technology, as a way to alleviate the shortage — but some emphasize that it is not the only one.
“We see telehealth as a very important innovation for rural communities,” said John Henderson, CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. Texas Monthly. “We don’t see it as a panacea.”
It’s not cheap either. The Holobox costS Crescent Hospital $65,000 up front, on top of $1200 per month in maintenance. But hospital CEO Raji Kumar, who pushed for the technology, argues that offering holographic appointments could be a way for struggling rural hospitals to retain — and therefore make money — patients who might forego a local medical center because it cannot attract top specialists. .
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