What you need to know
- Microsoft's HoloLens is cropping up in a number of places, be it on the heads of U.S. Army members or nurses at care homes in the UK.
- Kendal Care Home in Cumbria adopted HoloLens headsets for its remote care initiatives and ended up ditching smartphones and tablets as a result of the headsets' effectiveness.
- In Kendal Care Home's case, nurses and GPs use HoloLens in conjunction with the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist app.
Imagine a world where those in need of medical attention are greeted by someone with the body of a nurse but the head of a general practitioner (GP). That world's been around for a while via tech such as phones and tablets, but now takes the form of nurses wearing HoloLens headsets so GPs can see everything going on without having to physically be in the room.
Such is the case at Kendal Care Home in Cumbria. Using HoloLens 2 headsets and the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist app, nurses are able to act as the body, eyes, and ears of GPs, while the doctors simply watch everything from behind a monitor in a remote location. This limits the amount of physical exposure the elderly and vulnerable care home patients are subjected to, minimizing safety risks brought about by the pandemic. Microsoft has a whole blog post on the subject, as well as a video.
Of course, aiding in elderly medical assistance is far from the only thing HoloLens is good for (when it works as intended). It's also great for combat, as evidenced by the U.S. Army's (delayed) IVAS contract. And on top of that, it's good for metaverse initiatives, which is why Meta is gobbling up Microsoft's HoloLens experts.
