Eyeworld Daily News

30 | EYEWORLD DAILY NEWS | MAY 6, 2023 ASCRS ANNUAL MEETING DAILY NEWS D avid Rhew, MD, global chief medical officer and vice president of healthcare for Microsoft, delivered a key- note address about extended reality in healthcare during Digital Day, sponsored by the Digital Ophthalmic Society (DOS) alongside ASCRS Sub- specialty Day programs. Extended reality, he said, en- compasses augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality. And it has the potential to help improve health- care outcomes, access to care, health safety, and efficiency of care. Extended reality technology has already been demonstrated to be effective and useful in the area of ophthalmology, Dr. Rhew said. It's being used in education/training, surgical assistance, diagnosis/screen- ing, and low-vision services. In education and training, Dr. Rhew said that students who used the HoloAnatomy application with the HoloLens 2 demonstrated a 50% higher retention rate of information being delivered with 40% less class time. Dr. Rhew also presented how Case Western Reserve University brought HoloLens 2 with HoloAnat- omy in for virtual instruction experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. "When we think about how we train individuals, this is a proven way to do it," he said, also showing how the University of Michigan is using this technology to not only educate about anatomy and structures but also about procedures. Dr. Rhew said extended reality has utility in research collaboration and surgical planning. He showed an example where doctors who were all thousands of miles apart were virtu- ally gathered around a 3D rendering of a brain to map out a complex surgery. The doctors were able to do this despite the distance but also in less time than it would have taken without the virtual technology. "We're starting down that path in ophthalmology where we have the opportunity to collaborate in ways that we could not have," Dr. Rhew said. "Imagine being able to take images of that individual and have individuals collaborate presurgical planning." The technology is not just for presurgical planning. Dr. Rhew said the technologies can be used to de- mocratize learning across a range of skill levels and experiences. Dr. Rhew said that extended real- ity can help the stretched ophthalmic workforce. There are so many things placed on ophthalmologists that are very time consuming, such as diabet- ic retinopathy screening. Dr. Rhew said capture mechanisms and AI applications meeting patients where they are can alleviate some of the burden on ophthalmologists so they can focus on what they're uniquely good at. From a low-vision services stand- point, Dr. Rhew shared a video of a Microsoft engineer who had been blind since age 7 and, as an adult, helped develop an app that "tells you at any moment what's going on around you." The app runs on smart- phones and smart glasses. It can help people read text, like menus for example, and recognize what people around them are doing. The engineer said the app can describe the general age, gender, and emotions of people. "Where we want to go now is toward scalability," Dr. Rhew said. While this technology in education and training is at academic medical centers now, they're looking to- ward bringing it into the metaverse. Where the technology for surgical assistance is currently being used for complicated cases, it could be used to democratize specialty care. Diagnosis/screening with these types of technologies is currently in pilot phases, but Dr. Rhew said the hope is for it to expand access to care. And finally, low-vision aids using ex- tended reality are also in pilots, but the hope is that it will someday be used on a broader scale to improve the quality of life for all low vision patients. Editors' note: Dr. Rhew has financial interests with Microsoft. Digital Day keynote: tapping extended reality to improve healthcare Dr. Rhew gives the keynote presentation at Digital Day where he spoke about the current and future applications for "extended reality" in ophthalmology.

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