Technology is primed at improving the quality and longevity of life and AR fits that bill perfectly. After more than two years of development and just as many millions of investments, Medivis is rolling out its promising SurgicalAR platform, a pre-surgical data integration tool. The company already has some 15 surgeries completed with the help of this potentially industry-defining Augmented Reality data imaging technology.
The curious case of New York based Medivis began as a side-project of ones Osama Choudhry and Christopher Morley, both working at NYU Medical Center at the time. The idea of having a pre-surgical rendering tool is very old indeed, but it really gained momentum with the advent of HoloLens. It was Microsoft’s device, who incidentally supply SurgicalAR platform with hardware alongside Dell, that made AR rendering not only possible but highly efficient. It prompted the two to start a company, and Medivis may have taken HoloLens to the greatest good so far.
The ‘holy grail’ being the ability ‘to holographically render a patient’ according to Morley, SurgicalAR is at its initial stages of potentially transforming surgeries. Revolutionary enough at its current stage, Medivis SurgicalAR platform is a data integration tool that gathers the most relevant patient information and presents it as a 3D model. ‘That’s where we see this immediately being useful’ Choudhry said, ‘in that pre-surgical planning stage’. The rendered 3D model of a patient is mapped back onto the patient which saves the usual chore of gathering data from all around in order to plan for surgery. The Medivis platform’s biggest contribution therefore is the ability ‘to streamline the process that requires a large amount of pieces and components and setups so you only need an AR headset to localize pathology and make decisions off of that’.
The ultimate goal, however, is to transform the operating room by making a complete AR medical imaging switch. ‘The interface between medical imaging and surgical utility from it is really where we see a lot of innovation being possible’, Morley again. This is all too well understood by Initialized Capital, the firm that led the financing for Medivis SurgicalAR platform. ‘When we first met Osama and Chris, we immediately understood the magnitude of the problem they were out to solve’, Initialized Capital general partner Eric Woersching recalls. ‘Medical imaging as it relates to surgical procedures has largely been neglected, leaving patients open to all sorts of complications and general safety issues’. Indeed, SurgicalAR tool may prove to be indispensable for accurate, hands-free approach to pre-surgical data gathering and planning. ‘We couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Medivis to the initialized family’, Woersching punctuates his statement.
In the hands of experts, medical experts not least, AR can be cast into a life-altering mold. SurgicalAR platform proves the case, as at least two Universities have chipped in effort on the tool’s development. Automating patient render processes is the path to follow, and we can’t wait to see where the path leads us.
