Surgeons say Apple Vision Pro saves them pain and injury
Surgery underway using Apple Vision Pro (Source: UC San Diego Health)
Since its launch in February 2024, the Apple Vision Pro has already been used by surgeons in the US, and across the globe. Now the first surgeon to ever perform a robotically assisted gastric-bypass operation, is now a proponent of the Apple Vision Pro both for patients and surgeons.
Santiago Horgan heads the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego, and told Time magazine that the Apple Vision Pro is more significant than the robot tool he used in 2000. "This is the same level of revolution, but will impact more lives because of the access to it," he says.
Horgan has previously tried Microsoft's HoloLens and Google Glass, but says their image resolution was not high enough. Apple Vision Pro is and in September 2023, with a pre-release test headset, he and colleagues performed a paraesophageal hernia operation wearing it.
"We are all blown away: it was better than we even expected," says Horgan. "I'm usually turning around and stopping the operation to see a CT scan; looking to see what happened with the endoscopy [another small camera that provides a closer look at organs]; looking at the monitor for the heart rate."
Instead, with Apple Vision Pro, Horgan can concentrate on the operation uninterrupted. That's better for the patient because they are on the operating table for less time, but it also has benefits for the surgeon.
Reportedly, 20% of surgeons polled in a 2022 study said that they would consider early retirement because of the discomfort of operations. Having to operate on a patient while looking up at a screen and taking in information from around the operating room even causes surgeons pain.
If it continues keeping experienced surgeons working, the price of the headset is more than worth it. But Christopher Longhurst, Horgan's colleague and chief clinical and innovation officer at UC San Diego Health, says price isn't the issue it would be for consumers.
"The monitors in the operating room are probably $20,000 to $30,000," he said. "So $3,500 for a headset is like budget dust in the healthcare setting."
The future of Apple Vision Pro in surgery
Longhurst is also working with the Apple Vision Pro on 3D radiology imaging. For this and different medical applications, Longhurst says his team believes that the Apple Vision Pro "is going to be the standard of care in the next years to come, in operating rooms all over the world."
Miguel Burch, head of the general surgery division at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, says that part of this is down to how Apple Vision Pro is a single device instead of a series of them.
"If everything we wanted to use in augmented reality is proprietarily attached to a different device, then we have 10 headsets and 15 different monitors," says Burch. "But with [Apple Vision Pro], you can use it with anything that has a video feed."
Burch also says he personally has sustained three unspecified injuries from performing minimally-invasive surgeries before the existence of the Apple Vision Pro. He calls the headset "ergonomically a solution to the silent problem of surgeons having to end their careers earlier."
Separately, a UK surgical assistant switched from HoloLens 2 to the Apple Vision Pro in March 2024, and described it as a "gamechanger."
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monitor (noun)
1. an instrument or device used for observing, checking, or keeping a continuous record of a process or quantity. (eg, heart monitor)
Their usage is the first definition, not the second.
There are other things like "certified" computers to use with the patient management software. They typically cost about double and are the same Dell's anyone can buy with a massive amount of markup. Doctors/Dentists no nothing about IT other than it has to work and the vendor scare tactics work well.
https://www.monitors.com/collections/surgical-displays
https://www.monitors.com/collections/surgical-displays/products/barco-mdsc-8358-k9307938
https://synergymedco.com/product/sony-lmd-xh550mt-55in-4k-3d-2d-lcd-medical-monitor/ (medical features listed)
https://www.medicalecart.com/products/sony-lmd-xh550mt-55-inch-4k-3d-2d-lcd-monitor-high-performance-medical-monitor-box-of-01.html
Low glare, picture-in-picture, 3D image input, color accurate, designed for easy cleaning for hygiene etc.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/exex-and-neurosurgeon-dr-robert-masson-achieve-world-first-using-apple-vision-pro-302054787.html
https://healthsystemcio.com/2024/09/30/apple-vision-pro-longhurst-broderick/ Rumblings in the force Apple definitely needed to release the Apple Vision to get it into the hands of as many very smart people so that they can get as much feedback to the hardware and software engineers at Apple to flesh out Vision OS and build new API’s needed by the developers.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/these-are-the-vision-pro-apps-apple-says-will-transform-healthcare/
Obviously none of this is instantaneous, the Apple Vision ramp up will be the same as the Apple Watch small iterative steps that build up into big things over time, the software/hardware race is at the beginning of the cycle.
Buy more shares or continue to hold? Hmm….
https://watchfaces.co/apple-watch-dominates-the-market-with-50-million-units-sold-in-2022/
If they can get AVP to a mass-market price point, they can reach this revenue and enough units to be a platform for 3rd parties to generate revenue on.
$1500 x 10m units = $15b. They sell this many Macbooks around this ASP. It's not going to move the overall revenue much from ~$390b (4% growth) but the more platforms the better.
DICOM is generally used for high resolution radiologic images. From X-Rays, to PET, to CT, MRI, 3D Mammography, etc.
Back to the Apple Vision Pro: I suspect that, as it is still early days, the various devices are poorly integrated with AVP. X-rays and CT scans images are not being ported to the AVP, instead the surgeon is looking directly at those monitors through the monitors of the AVP, with all the associated colour fidelity and resolution loss, and moiré. Once these medical devices are ported to the AVP, the surgeon will be able to pause, rest their neck, looking in any direction, while zooming into and examining a glorious image of the CT scan image using simple hand gestures, etc.. Glorious!
It seems pretty clear that AVP 1.0, from a strategic POV for Apple, is about developing use cases for its unique set of capabilities. The first goal, however, was producing a v1.0 device that provided a solid showcase for those capabilities, which AVP 1.0 impressively accomplished, especially considering its complexity and all-new OS. No company, and certainly not Apple, would embark on a new product like this without the patience and cash reserves to give it the time it needs in the marketplace. Are you aware of how much cash Apple is sitting on? Apple is no stranger to having its new products derided: iPod? So what! Apple is way too late to the MP3 player market. iPhone? Hah! Blackberry is king! It will never succeed without a physical keyboard! Macbook Air? What a joke! Too slow, no battery life, just a rich person's toy. iPad? You've gotta be kidding! It's nothing but a big iPhone! Apple Watch? Ridiculous! It can't do anything unless it's tethered to a nearby iPhone! Through it all, Apple ignores the usual haters and just keep cranking out hit products.
Big difference from the article title.
The real gist is the some surgeons have hypothesized that Apple's headset may possibly be helpful in these ways in the future - though also possibly requiring more chiropractor and opthalmologst visits.
The AVP might proide prettier pictures, but the end result is no different than already established headsets. A doctor performing complex surgery with both hands and multiple instruments certainly doesn't need to be sweating over their face or tethered to a battery via a long cord.
Unfortunately, there are always neat ideas with old tech (the AVP isn't new tech. It's just another headset, but with better specs).
Articles like this are always fun, but end up being meaningless. Let;s not forget the unbeleivable amount of money Facebook invested in becoming Meta based entirely around this concept, paying people to come up with reasons for it to exists and its own exployess couldn't even be bothered to use it. the concept itself is just not what it was hoped to be.
It's.
Not.
There.
At least not Yet.
Once it's a pair of self-contained glasses, sunglasses, it will be mass market capable and also more useful in hypothetical situations like this. Everybody either wears glases or sunglasses so it makes sense to have the tech built in to something people use anyway. Not everyone wants to play star trek all the time - at least not in public.