It’s been more than 10 months since Google released an application provider interface for its Google Glass wearable device, and though Glass effectively remains in beta, healthcare apps are starting to pop up.
Pristine co-founder and CEO Kyle Samani says the company is actually generating revenue from its Glass offerings.
In October, the University of California, Irvine, began piloting Pristine’s EyeSight videoconferencing app for remote consultations with anesthesiologists, as well as the CheckLists for surgeries. A few weeks ago, company announced a partnership with Wound Care Advantage, a company that manages hospital wound centers. Another related deal is in the works with a university hospital in southern California.
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A third client will turn on the app in its emergency department on March 7, Samani said at the Health Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference in Orlando, Fla. Pristine was among the 44 vendors displaying their wares at the Startup Showcase, where early-stage companies could get a small exhibit space for a fraction of the cost of a standard booth.
Pristine was founded in May 2013. It now has 10 full-time employees, with an 11th about to start, Samani said.
The EyeSight app takes the video stream off the Glass camera and sends the stream securely to authorized users on Apple iOS and Android devices, as well as Windows and Mac computers.
“This opens a lot of interesting possibilities for telemedicine,” Samani said.
Samani mentioned ambulances, intensive care units and medical education as potential new use cases. In the latter instance, he said Glass facilitates “virtual shadowing and rounding” for medical students and residents.
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“We’re doing all sorts of work here to make Glass hospital-friendly,” Samani said.
With Glass, remote physicians can get a nurse’s-eye view of a patient from a perspective PC Webcams and even phone cameras can’t provide. Unlike, say, a GoPro camera, Google’s device is hands-free, operated by voice command; users login and navigate by voice and navigate by voice, as Glass has no keyboard, mouse or touch screen, though it does have a button on the temple. As Samani put it, “Good luck convincing nurses to wear a helmet cam.”
A video stream does not need FDA 510(k) clearance, as it is only facilitating communication, not acting as a diagnostic or treatment device. The same is true for the checklist app, according to Samani.