San Francisco-based Osso VR, a pioneer in immersive medical instruction, is launching a medical training app on Apple Vision Pro brand named Osso Health.
Osso Health provides procedural education to healthcare professionals, patients preparing for surgery, and anyone interested in medical innovation.
“Osso Health for Apple Vision Pro opens up exciting possibilities for the future of immersive procedural education,” said Justin Barad, M.D., co-founder and chief strategy officer at Osso VR. “Apple Vision Pro unlocks new opportunities to scale spatial computing in healthcare with groundbreaking display quality and virtually lag-free learning experience, helping solve important challenges to education in healthcare.”
The Osso Health app is designed to simulate medical procedures at the highest fidelity, seamlessly integrating the OR into physical spaces and providing on-demand access to hands-on learning from anywhere. visionOS, the operating system that powers Apple Vision Pro, features a new 3D user interface and input system controlled solely by the user’s eyes, hands, and voice.
Currently, Osso Health app is available for carpal tunnel release and total knee replacement training. According to Osso VR, “The user can walk through the key steps of each procedure using Apple Vision Pro’s novel approach to spatial computing. Spatial computing has opened up new possibilities for medical professionals to explore complicated medical procedures in a secure, controlled, and real-world setting. Osso VR’s proficiency in medical artistry overlayed onto the real world enhances the authenticity of the training, making it an indispensable tool for medical students, residents, and practicing physicians alike.”
OTW asked for details on the three-dimensional user interface and input system and Dr. Barad explained, “Osso VR is the first immersive training platform to launch hand control-based simulation, where you can run through complex procedural simulations realistically using just your hands. When launching Osso Health, we are currently leveraging their gaze-based input system and working on porting our hand control system to the platform for hands-on simulations.”
“When developing Osso Health, we knew that the visual quality and performance of the headset would be impressive, but I think we were a bit taken aback at the final results,” said Dr. Barad to OTW. “We tried to throw as much at the device as possible to slow it down, but even with 10,000 skulls simultaneously rotating and flying around the screen (yes, we really did this), we could not even get it to manage a hiccup.”
“The app videos are impressive but don’t do it justice. The headset has a level of clarity that hasn’t been possible until now. This is also the first time we’ve ever made our content publicly available. We were a little nervous about this, but the feedback we’ve been getting so far has been overwhelmingly positive.”
“There are two areas in which I think this technology has a significant impact on patient education. First, understanding the procedures that they may be undergoing or choosing to undergo: Talking about surgery is one thing, but really understanding what takes place, how, and why is another factor. You can’t really show patients a surgical video and walk them through that because it can sometimes be unnecessarily terrifying. Understanding their procedure in a safe space at an appropriate level of detail empowers patients to regain control of their care and make more informed decisions about the right procedures for them.”
“In addition, More and more patients or their caregivers are required to perform moderately complex technical tasks at home: dressing changes, complex medication administration, orthotic and prosthetic adjustments and much more. It is critical to understand what they need to be doing ahead of time so they have the confidence and proficiency to perform these tasks well and have a good outcome. I find that patients often are sent home who are not ready to perform these tasks and either continue to do them incorrectly, give up and just don’t do them, or finally ask for help only after they’ve made mistakes and run into trouble. This is an area that has been generally overlooked that immersive training can directly and effectively address.”
