DOTmed February 21, 2020
A CT scanner is down; patients are waiting. The hospital’s regular CT service engineer is hours away, but Rachel, another trained service engineer with less CT experience, is on-site.
Rachel connects online with a remote CT service engineer, describes the issue, and slips on an augmented reality headset. With it she can see a virtual overlay on top of the actual hardware in question as the remote engineer guides her to the likely source of the issue. She listens while watching as the engineer’s virtual hands demonstrate exactly what she needs to do. In minutes she makes a simple adjustment, and the scanner is back in service.
This scenario is not as futuristic as it might seem. Clinical...