People often mistake modern medicine as something that has existed in one form or another since the beginning of mankind. A large majority of the population find it extremely surprising that modern medicine actually began to take shape not too long ago.

Pinpointing the precise shift over from traditional medicine has been a subject of debate within the scientific community for some time, however, a pivotal transformation took place sometime during the first half of the 19th century around the time that Bacteriology was introduced.

Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian/Austrian doctor discovered that by performing the simple act of hand washing before a medical procedure, in this case childbirth, greatly lowered the mortality rate of new mothers. That small yet incredibly significant change happened a little over 170 years ago. At the same time, Honoré de Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe, Hans Christian Andersen, all magnificent artists were in the midst of their most productive years. The following year, Thomas Edison was born. Romanticism as an intellectual and cultural movement was in full swing and rapidly changed the “old continent” (Europe) forever.

Medical science has come a long way since the days of washing hands as the primary form of fighting disease. A long way since Mr. Ignaz himself, indirectly insulted members within the medical community with the ludicrous suggestion that something as trivial as washing hands was indeed vital. Advances in medicine and technology can be heavily attributed to incredible individuals dedicating their lives to various forms of scientific research.

During the preliminary research phase of Iryo, the team began to define current deficiencies within the realm of medical IT. The inefficiencies of both for profit and non-profit medical research became evidently clear. The decision was made to dedicate a substantial portion of Iryo’s efforts to improving the foundational elements that will be needed in order to improve and advance modern day medical research. This decision has impactful implications on the utility of IRYO tokens. As part of the yearly inflation, Iryo will dedicate a minimum of 50% of the newly minted Iryo tokens to internal or external medical R&D initiatives that will pave the way for new innovative products.

Today, Iryo is thrilled to announce the first R&D specific partnership. Iryo has signed a two year contract with an elite medical institution based out of Slovenia. The Community Health Centre of Ljubljana and its globaly highly regarded Simulation Centre is an R&D focused educational centre. The centre performs cutting-edge research behind the use of advanced simulation techniques within healthcare. Together with the Ljubljana Simulation Centre, Iryo will dedicate a special team of IT-researchers to develop one of the first practical cases of augmented reality in the medical world. Specifically, through the use and application of the Microsoft HoloLens alongside the proprietary simulation software that will be used to replicate life-threatening events as accurately as possible.

President of Slovenia, mr. Borut Pahor, visiting the early days of Iryo team, meeting with our CEO, Vasja Bočko

Iryo initiated the preliminary research needed in order to assess the impact of combining augmented reality with the use of the HoloLens alongside Iryo’s software and the extensive knowledge of medical staff within the Ljubljana Simulation Centre. We also applied for Microsoft mixed reality program where Microsoft supports the leading inovation in the field of augmented reality. The first publicly available demonstration should take place before Q3 of 2018, exact dates will be published by the Simulation Centre. After that, Iryo will begin to expand on the technology that will help cover additional medical emergency scenarios (planned for Q4 2018) and in 2019 we can expect a bigger push by the AR industry around the accessibility and capability of augmented reality devices, specifically around the use of AR goggles. I predict that 2019 will be revolutionary in terms of the sheer advancement of AR products and solutions.

Close Iryo advisor testing out the alpha version of Iryo simulation use case.

President of Slovenia testing out VR prototype in the current Iryo offices.

We’ve come a long way from the beginnings of modern medicine. Iryo was established to play a global part of the never-ending evolution of medical science, hand in hand with incredible individuals from the world of medical research.