At SDI, we love working with the healthcare industry. It makes us feel like we’re giving back and helping an industry that can truly change the world for the better. In fact, we talk about the intersection between tech and the world of medicine frequently. Which means that we know what a successful technological application in Medicine looks like.

The last year has actually had some of the most movement in the industry we’ve ever seen. From data management to training tools, tech is truly making it easier for patients to get healthy, for Doctors and Surgeons to be better, and for HealthCare companies to save money and stay in business.

SO, let’s take a look at some of these new fields!

Virtual and Augmented Reality

We’ve talked about how VR and AR can help Healthcare Practitioners, including a post almost a year ago to the day, where it was number 1 on our list of top 2016 app trend predictions (talk about being spot on!). VR/AR are showing some real revolutionary potential, on both the Patient-Facing and Health Practitioner-facing sides.

On the patient treatment side, VR and AR both have the ability to create extraordinarily realistic worlds, and has fantastic potential in treating Degenerative Mental disorders, as well as appearing to have some beneficial impact on PTSD and chronic psychosomatic pain. Another patient-facing VR solution, SnowWorld, has been clearly demonstrated to alleviate Burn Patient pain

We’ve even talked about how VR and AR could completely change how doctors and surgeons are trained (we also talked about how VR/AR would revolutionize gaming, months before Pokemon Go – god we’re good!). Which brings us to this post today – and the upcoming release of the first AUgmented Reality platform for Surgeons.

Touch Surgery is a London-based Medical Tech company that has already developed hundreds of Surgery Training apps for SmartPhones and Tablets. According to the company, they use modern tech tools (Cognitive Mapping, AI, and even 3D Rendering) to create very robust apps (contact us to learn more about how to build an app like this). But for 2017, they’ve extended their services to an immersive AR Platform.

While this hasn’t been released to the public, Touch Surgery is close, as evidenced by the fact they’re debuting it at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This AR platform is a massive improvement over a mobile app – not to knock the apps. IT’s just that this AR platform is capable of training surgeons in an operating room with actual operating tools. Clearly the potential here is pretty massive.

Gadgets

Gadgets offer unique ways to check on a patient’s overall health (and of course general fitness). It’s uniqueness actually makes it a challenge for some developers without the experience that our guys have. But 2016 has seen some new advances that make it easier to build Gadget Apps, and to provide us with some new tools for cool, advanced features.

First up on the list: Clothing threads. Siren Care is debuting its premiere product – a sock. Yep, a sock that goes on your foot. It seems that this company has managed to create electronic threads, similar to what Google is trying to do with Project Jacquard.

The key difference is that Siren Care’s sock focuses solely on tracking the thermal differences of a user’s foot. This data is then used by Doctors to determine when (and potentially why) things went wrong in Diabetic patients. This kind of tech is pretty awesome – and can save lives.

Next up is Watson, IBM’s Supercomputer. [Dr] Watson (or, the Supercomputer formerly known as Chef Watson). Watson Health is a series of cognitive systems – systems that are capable of not only seeing, but analyzing and reporting on Unstructured data. What’s Unstructured data? Data not visible to most current Data Analysis tools – or 80% of all health data.

Watson Health can also be added to a Gadget App can also turn any wearable into a ridiculously powerful health sensor. In other words, Watson has the capability to collect AND understand Health patterns in ways that never before possible. So, if you happen to be in the industry of HealthCare, give our expert Gadget App Developers a call today.

The last product we will discuss today is another Gadget. But the focus is on Fitness and exercise as a preventative, as opposed to devices for treatment of training. This is a gadget from the Finnish company Suunto. It’s newest Fitness Tracker (named MoveSense is internet-capable device that has Suunto’s pretty amazing Heartbeat tracker crammed into it, plus allows you to connect to all sorts of other devices.

Fitness trackers are important for people who are trying to get the most out of their workout – without overdoing it and injuring themselves. Tools like this can help people keep better track of caloric consumption and expenditure; this leads to better, healthier eating, as well as an incentive to workout. Finally, the last part of this is that it provides a data record, in case a doctor or PT ever needs to look at your past exercise patterns.

For over 15 years, SDI has specialized in creating unique apps, websites and software infrastructure for industries as diverse as Healthcare, Real Estate and Manufacturing. Want to build your own tech tool? Give us a call at 408.805.0495/408.621.8481 – or click to contact us!