We have reported in many articles how augmented reality is aiming at industrial, professional and corporate applications after the consumer products like Google Glass did not take off as hoped for by Google and others.
While we typically focus on the developers of the hardware solution, the software side is as important because professional applications require very targeted software. This kind of application specific software provides solutions that enable very specific tasks under unique conditions. One such application is for example healthcare, where patient safety and privacy are of the utmost concern.
Source: Commonwealth Care of Roanoke, Inc. (CCR)
The Commonwealth Care of Roanoke, Inc. (CCR) is a health and rehabilitation center in Virginia that just announced that they are using augmented reality glasses with their nursing staff. The nurse in the room with a patient wears the AR device that allows the head nurse to not only see what is happening in the room, but also provide information to the nurse for providing better service. As CCR states, the goal is to improve the quality of care.
The solution is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant to provide privacy and security of individually identifiable health information as required by law. This law also defines civil and criminal penalties for violations by individuals and institutions.
Analyst Comment
The software provider is a company based in Austin, TX that provides the software as well as the glasses. The press release does not specify the company’s name, but it could be Pristine, that provides software solutions for various applications including HIPAA complaint software. Their software is available for a variety of devices, including The Vuzix M100 device that seems to be used by CCR. This is of course speculation on my part, but the provided information is a perfect fit. The fact that the Vuzix M100 is being used is based on the provided image that shows the Vuzix device, but they could also use other hardware of course. (NH)
