Google Glass may only be the beginning for Google wearable tech in the healthcare space. Google has acquired Flutter, a gesture recognition startup, for an undisclosed sum. Flutter has developed apps for Mac OS X and Windows that allows users to control computer programs through gestures (without clicking or typing).
Flutter launched last year and raised $1.4 million from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors. Flutter’s existing apps will not be shut down, though it’s likely the company’s focus will shift to Google products. With the exception of a Chrome extension, Flutter has not developed anything yet for Google’s products.
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While this has many implications for Google technology, it could also point toward Google moving into the gesture-controlled space in healthcare. Siemens, for instance, announced it was at work to develop gesture controlled software for the OR as early as 2011. (And last month announced with Purdue University an effort to build a gesture controlled 3-D shaping device.) It could allow the company to move even further into healthcare wearable tech.
Products like MYO, which looks like a Star Trek-inspired bangle and uses “the electrical activity in your muscles to wirelessly control your computer, phone, and other favorite digital technologies,” have attracted a lot of attention at SXSW, the media and healthcare.
“There’s been a lot of interest in MYO from hospitals and surgeons,” Stephen Lake, CEO of Thalmic Labs, told Forbes. “Once a surgeon is scrubbed in to a clean environment like an operating room, they can’t interact with technology in the usual ways. If there’s a touchscreen present, they have to tell a nurse which button to press. Gesture control technology can free that nurse to do something more important.”
