This App Shows How HoloLens Can Make Healthcare Safer

If you've been to the doctor enough, you know that the medical staff can make a variety of mistakes from time to time. They're human and that's normal, but errors in the medical field can often have significant negative impacts. At Boston's 2016 HoloHacks event, a team of developers created HoloHealth to mitigate human error in common healthcare tasks.

The app allows users to identify a large variety of medical tools to avoid choosing the wrong one or misunderstanding what should be used in a given situation. Additionally, an arm overlay is available so the user can see on the patient's arm where to insert a PICC line (a tube for administering medicine and other treatments).

The app only does a few things at the moment, as it's the product of a rapid development event, but it demonstrates how vital augmented and mixed reality devices will be in the medical field. So many forgivable mistakes are made in hospitals every day that apps like HoloHealth can help prevent in the future. This is just a small start, but if you see a nurse with a crazy headset someday, you can rest assured it'll make your treatment better.