Most of the Google Glass videos we’ve seen thus far don’t seem to tap this device’s enormous potential. Used as a miniaturised camera phone or just another vehicle for porn, Glass doesn’t do much that a GoPro can’t. And that’s a damn shame, because the way Glass enables wearers to near-effortlessly shoot point-of-view video makes it perhaps the most revolutionary teaching tool ever created, as Dr. Abraham Verghese of Stanford University School of Medicine shows here.
Teaching physical exam techniques is a major challenge. The signs that tell a physician something’s wrong are often exceedingly subtle, and for students, watching an exam from eight rows back in a lecture hall is like trying to appreciate the dialog in Citizen Kane from across the street. Dr. Verghese’s video shows students exactly what he’s seeing, how he’s approaching the patient, where he’s placing his hands — everything you’d hope your newly-graduated M.D. or D.O. should know.
Granted, this isn’t the first time a doctor has donned Glass as a med school teaching aid.
We’ve heard mention of Glass video taken during surgical procedures (with the patient’s consent, and without showing faces or identifying features) to teach techniques without crowding the operating room or slowing down surgery. But amid all the eye-rolling and groaning about Google’s new toy, and all the head-scratchingly childish uses we’ve heard suggested, it’s refreshing to see it used for something decidedly altruistic. As Gary Shteyngart points out, Glass is going to impact our lives in some unpredictable, often wonderful, ways. In fact, in the hands of folks like Dr. Verghese, it already is. [Stanford Medicine SCOPE via MedGadget]