Iron medical medical VR? Four difficulties and a way out for VR+ medical

Text | VR Gyro Vivian

The oldest aunt of the gyroscope home

Since 2016, VR has been stirring up traditional industries, and medical care has quickly followed suit. From live surgery to preoperative learning and even patient education, VR appears to be gradually infiltrating into the medical field. However, behind the infiltration is the ambiguity of concepts and definitions, and the disconnect between technology and practical operations. At present, there are at least four problems in medical + VR, but it can be solved.

VR Gyro released some time ago, "The $5.1 billion market is not so good! The medical + VR related articles from the VR medical care three models attracted the attention of the industry. One of the practitioners commented that "from May to July 2016, two months after the VR + medical trial was wrong, "We turned in the opposite direction" and the challenge that confronted him was that VR+ Medical would pay for it.

This time, VR Gyro interviewed Pan Zhi, the CEO of medical micro-communications, the earliest VR operation in China. He had been deeply practised in the digital medical field for many years and he is actively trying to combine VR+ medical services. For the current status of VR and medical treatment, he analyzed the four implementation forms and their difficulties.

Formerly known as Crystal Stone Medical Business Division, Medical Microphone started its digital medical media business in 2009 and was officially established in 2013. It provides digital film and APP development for many medical companies, including medical device companies and pharmaceutical enterprise medical institutions. Other services, relying on the nine models of the human body that were established before, began to flex its muscles in the training and education of VR medicine.

In 2015, Medical Microphone began researching and developing Surgeek (The Lancet), a game-based surgical medical education service system that systematically integrates virtual reality and three-dimensional simulation interaction technology. It is said that its role can help surgical freshmen and students. Step doctors master the points of surgical learning faster and more solidly and form good surgical thinking.

In January 2016, the Medical Micro-Medical Group of Doctors jointly developed the medical VR application in clinical treatment and surgical technique training. In March of the same year, Medical Microelectronics received a million-dollar angel round of financing, and the investors were focused on investment in the healthcare industry. At that time, Liu Yedao was still in the research and development stage. Then the Willow Swordsman VR Venture Project was released and won the “Best Education Application” award for the HTC VIVE Competition.

In June 2016, Medical Microsystems and Ruijin Hospital jointly conducted a live VR operation. Currently, their revenue mainly comes from the customized demand services of medical device companies, including medical 3D animation and VR content.

For medical micro-channels, the transition from digital medicine to VR medical care is very natural. “We have always been doing digital content and started doing medical 3D animation. Our difference with other companies is that our genes are not the same. Now VR is just a change in the way it was presented. It used to be a mobile phone screen and it is now VR. However, there is actually not much change in the content, or the digital content produced by the computer, to show what he meant to express." Pan Mao said so.

Pan Zhi also has his own opinions on the forms of VR combined with medical treatment that are currently common in the market.

VR surgery live: low but single threshold

At present, live surgery and panoramic video are the most widely used VR methods in medical treatment.

In April 2016, British doctor Shafei Ahmed performed the entire course of the operation with VR technology in the operation room of Royal London Hospital. In June of last year, Medical Microphone completed the first live VR operation in the operating room of Ruijin Hospital. Afterwards, Good Medicine and Wanbo Medical VR Studio were all on the line with VR surgery panoramic video.

"Of course it's not just the medical industry. Concerts, shows, landscapes, etc. are all VR videos. Relatively speaking, VR video has a low threshold and there are devices that you can shoot. Anything you see as a business can be understood. It doesn’t mean that you should be highly sophisticated, easy to implement, easily accepted, and cost-controllable. Your company will be able to form a healthy business operation. "If you don't make money in ten years, your company can't go on." Pan Mao agreed with this approach, but he also said: Video is still not enough, but pure video, it is only a means to objectively show events.

And now that the VR surgery live broadcast is not clear enough for shooting, minimally invasive surgery can not be captured, and it can't replace the existing surgical video system.

VR simulation, clinical surgery: it is a goal but difficult to achieve

The VR surgery live broadcast solves the problem of watching, and the simulation surgery emphasizes the actual operation. That is, in the virtual world, it can simulate the tactile sensation, free cutting and force feedback in real surgery. This is also considered to be the ultimate vision of VR medical, and of course it is also the most difficult to achieve.

"Medical itself is very rigorous. It does not allow any error because it is related to human life. It also determines that it is more rigorous in terms of content development. It can't be said about it, it's almost OK, all content is clinically necessary. Compared to this, the process is quite lengthy. For example, traditional medicines and devices, listed on the market today, appeared in the laboratory ten years ago. During the middle period, the clinical data were collated and compared, and finally what was the curative effect? , what side effects and other data are accurate to allow you to go public."

"From the first step to solve image recognition, the second step is to do free cutting and separation of VR images on this basis, and then the next step is force feedback. I think such a process is the development path." I think that doing VR simulation surgery is not mature now.

Without force feedback, the VR handle feels too different from the scalpel. The VR simulation surgeon is not interested in using it. Because of the constraints of the hardware technology, it is even more difficult to use VR in the clinic.

VR Medical Education and Training: Maximum Demand

"When we use clinical VR for some distance, do we not do it? No, we have things we can do. Then we can do things that don't require such a high level, such as medical education and training." Pan Xi said frankly that VR medical education and training are exactly what they are doing.

At the same time, he also believes that this is the most reliable way for VR medical practitioners to obtain profitability.

“I personally feel that in the next 3-5 years, it will be a reserve period of VR technology, dizziness, performance, hardware costs, algorithms, etc. These will take time. What can we do during this period? We can use existing infrastructure hardware. Maturity, to match with some of the applications corresponding to it. Relatively speaking, in the medical field, education and training have application needs in the short term. Everyone says that landing, what is landing is to let the company earn money, can have Profit can only be invested continuously."

The current main revenue of medical micro-information is precisely the customized content service from medical device companies, but the cycle and cost of customized content are relatively high. “The increase of more than 10% per year is already very good, and the ceiling is very obvious. ."

In VR medical education and training, human anatomy teaching is particularly suitable for VR, medical micro-computer accumulation of the human body's nine model databases, its model database and Fudan University Medical College Department of Anatomy teaching establishment, through the CT data source, anatomical map, and The human entity study took nearly 5 years.

As for the VR medical start-up team, this is the most difficult obstacle to overcome by using the VR technology to generate products easily with medical micro-channels. A team of VR medical start-ups once said, “The medical college of Niubi has a very sophisticated 3D digital human body, which translates into VR. It's very easy. The medicine is too fine. Without professional doctors' guidance, the technical team simply does not know how to start. Too complicated, the start-up team to do fine-grained 3D digital human body is difficult and returns low.

Market demand and technical barriers are high. VR medical education and training has become the most important direction for medical micro-information three-dimensional model and VR. Pan Mao said that "mainly the current revenue is still from the customization of corporate users, just beginning to introduce productization in May, is expected to have some initial results by the end of this year, the goal is to achieve revenue balance next year, this is an important task now."

VR patient education: landing difficult

VR+ medical treatment is often used abroad as an adjunctive treatment. For example, in dental surgery, it is used to distract the patient's attention to relieve pain; the other is patient education. Through VR glasses, the patient can understand the pathology and facilitate the treatment solution. However, at this stage, patient education in hospitals is not simple.

Pan Yu bluntly said that now that the hospital has no patient at all, it is very difficult for VR devices to enter the hospital. “You think of the hospital as a company, something that can help the company make money, and things that can increase work efficiency. I believe they will pay for it. This is difficult to achieve in public hospitals unless high-end private hospitals have this demand.”

Patient education as a form of medical assistance, but now can not improve the efficiency of the hospital, and patients only want to quickly cure, and will not pay for the "scientific".

Advice: Go for a ladder to get something

Medicine has gone through a long course of development since ancient times. With the advancement of natural science and technology, it has achieved great development. For example, 3D printing technology in recent years has had many application cases in the medical field. When VR technology gradually Mature, medicine is also combined with it.

The three-dimensional animation and panoramic operation live view now solve the problem of seeing and cognition. The second stage is operation and interaction. The current difficulty is not in content production, but in the requirements of the host performance, the underlying algorithm and graphic calculation need to be done. The company promoted the third stage. This is a simulation operation, not only to achieve the interaction of cutting, separation, etc. The most important is touch and force feedback.

At present, VR+ medical treatment is still more used in medical training and education, and more still depends on the original three-dimensional model. VR+ medical treatment is long-term.

"If you feel that it is difficult to land, you must adjust your thinking and strategy. If you take a ladder and take a rocket that is out of reach, don't do it. Choose a ladder and jump to get something. At this time, it was easy to land on the floor.” Pan Mao gave advice.

For example, if you have hospital resources, you can build a technical team to participate in the shooting and become the best quality live VR surgery shooting team. If you have technology, you can export brain imaging, B-mode, and other floor plans as VR images to do hardware interface or development of the underlying engine.

In VR medical training and education, more reliance on the original 3D modeling, if you want to start from the beginning to do a huge amount of work, small-volume startup companies simply can not afford, companies with a three-dimensional modeling basis can use this as a cut-in point.

At present, the four most common forms of VR medical care are live VR surgery, simulated VR surgery, VR medical training, and patient education. Although there are still difficulties in each form, breakthroughs in these forms are a way out.

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