News Feature | October 31, 2014

Google Glass Provides Education, Healthcare Opportunities

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Your Healthcare IT Clients Employees: Surprisingly Open To Workplace Wearables

As the application of Google Glass proliferates into various industries, particularly in the education and healthcare fields, VARs will find opportunities to provide solutions and support.

Campus Technology reports that The State University of New York Cobleskill has a new pilot program that uses Google Glass to provide point-of-view video to students in their paramedic and animal hoof health training programs. Through this new pilot program, students will be able to watch other as others perform a particular procedure, such as a minor hoof surgery or paramedic practice, and faculty will be able to perform student evaluations though the new point-of-view video. According to Campus Technology’s interview with Jim Dutcher, Cobleskill’s CIO, the process also bolsters student performance by encouraging competition. Google provided SUNY Cobleskill with 15 to 20 free Google Glass devices, a number that was then matched by the school’s purchase.

Another use of the technology is with paramedics, as this article from Business Solutions Magazine outlines. MedEx Ambulance Service uses Google Glass for its paramedics to communicate with a doctor in the emergency department directly from the ambulance. The wearable tech gives patients in dire situations access to advice, diagnosis, and treatment options directly from physicians.

And with apps like EyeSight and Checklists, Google Glass is also making its entrance into healthcare facilities, as Health IT Outcomes reports. According to MedCity News, the University of California, Irvine, began a pilot project of Pristine’s EyeSight videoconferencing app for remote consultations with anesthesiologists and their CheckLists for surgeries. Last month, the University of Southern California’s Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale, CA, adopted the app in partnership with Wound Care Advantage, a company that manages hospital wound centers.

Forbes underscored the importance of the opportunities that Google Glass provides for education and healthcare, stating, “Medical education, from traditional medical school to the field training of paramedics, is about to fall under the influence of Google Glass.” Forbes goes on to detail Grossman’s use of Glass to educate, writing, “Now, this Google Explorer is extending its use into medical education and begins to look at the value of Glass as a tool for teaching.”