March 29, 2024
Health Comes Into Focus at Magic Leap

Photo: Magic Leap

Health Comes Into Focus at Magic Leap

A strategic partnership with Brainlab and early development by others is helping to grow the health and fitness Spatial Computing ecosystem

| 9/10/2019

It’s not news to anyone that technological advances are disrupting all industries and creating significant new business opportunities, particularly in health, wellness and fitness. While we at Magic Leap love to have fun and entertain, our overall mission is to improve lives. Under the leadership of health-tech executive Jennifer Esposito, who joins Magic Leap as the Vice President of Health, we are transforming the relationship between health and technology.

Spatial computing removes the barriers of geography and enables care providers access to an unprecedented amount of contextual information that surrounds patients and clinical spaces. All of this, coupled with AI, 5G and IOT technologies, enable spatial computing to transform the experiences of both patients and care providers in ways that previous technologies have not. It allows for the development of novel, more adaptive and personalized forms of digital therapeutics, and creates completely new “points of care.” Ultimately spatial computing enables a significant shift from reactive care to a more continuous health and wellness system throughout lifespans.

In order to make this digital transformation a reality, Magic Leap’s Health team is working on tools and frameworks to enable developers and the broader health industry ecosystem to build applications that leverage spatial computing. The team is also working on analytical and clinical validation of certain biomarker capabilities. These biomarkers, coupled with external sensors and other currently unused contextual data from the edge would better inform both individual patient care and population health (think public health and safety, as well). For example, smart city data could provide important information on pollution, air quality, water quality, allergens and even pathogens. We know that these things impact health but there is no simple way to incorporate them to understand a patient's symptoms when they come to a doctor's office or to inform, at a population level, public health and public safety indicators. This is a prime example of the “data rich, insight poor” hurdle that spatial computing can help clear.

In an exclusive collaboration that will introduce spatial computing to the operating room and radiology suite, Magic Leap and German medical technology company Brainlab will redefine how surgeons and other clinicians visualize and access medical imaging data. The first solution leveraging Magic Leap’s spatial computing technology will be a collaborative 3D Spatial viewer that can be used for surgical planning. Magic Leap and Brainlab are also working on a software framework and tools that will bring the Magic Leap spatial computing platform together with Brainlab’s state-of-the-art data management, cloud computing, visualization and data pre-processing capabilities. This software development framework will enable developers to build and integrate additional spatial computing solutions for the digital operating rooms and radiotherapy suites of the future.

Jennifer and her team will also be working closely with Magic Leap's telecommunications partners around the world to help bring spatial computing experiences to life. With AT&T Business and its partner ecosystem, the Magic Leap health team is developing new ways that spatial computing can enable collaboration and co-presence, as well as clinical training and digital patient therapeutic solutions that benefit from 5G. Below are a few more early developments designed for the Magic Leap One we’re excited about. The solutions below are investigational in nature and not yet commercially available.

1. XRHealth

XRHealth is working to bring health and wellness spatial computing solutions to medical practitioners. Their ARHealth therapeutic platform aims to deliver spatial computing applications for rehabilitation, cognitive training, psychological assessment and distraction from pain. These non-invasive medical tools seek to enhance the treatment experience for patients -- allowing them to analyze and quantify their own results and track their progress over time. Magic Leap’s spatial computing technology is allowing strategic medical application developers like XRHealth to explore novel solutions to old problems, with the potential to effect real change for patients.

2. SyncThink

SyncThink's breakthrough eye tracking analytics are an ideal match for the sophistication and accessibility of Magic Leap's sensors. The company aims to empower clinicians and users with mobile, reliable, objective brain health analytics and expert care from anywhere in the world. This technology will be used to aid diagnostic and therapeutic decisions in new concussion and balance disorder patients. SyncThink’s goal is to use spatial computing technology from Magic Leap to be the gold standard in brain health assessment.

3. The Dan Marino Foundation

Magic Leap has been working with Dan Marino Foundation for the last several years. Together with USC, they developed a tool using spatial computing that helps young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other developmental disabilities overcome an important obstacle they may face entering into the workforce — in-person job interviews. The Virtual Interactive Training Agent (VITA) is a virtual simulation job interview practice system that builds competence and reduces anxiety. The current solution uses avatars, but we envision a future where human-centered AI is applied - a virtual human who can be a guide and trainer for a variety of use cases, including the one at the Dan Marino Foundation. Future versions can address more use cases and leverage artificial intelligence to measure eye gaze, speech patterns and response time, generate real-time feedback and deliver adaptive adjustments to the learning plan.

4. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford

Magic Leap is supporting the Stanford Chariot Program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, which is creating a new medical training application for Magic Leap One. The CHARM (Chariot AR Medical) Simulator uses spatial computing to enable training on virtual models, and allows multiple users to simultaneously participate in a simulation via a multi-user mode. Users can add virtual patients, vital monitors and customize numerous parameters, such as a patient’s vitals, gender, age, and symptoms. This initial work demonstrates the many ways that spatial computing can enable realistic, synthetic training experiences that can be conducted anywhere, without complex setups and dedicated space. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford is also developing solutions that use spatial computing to alleviate the stress that medical procedures can have on younger patients.

We are excited to see early adopters developing health applications and use cases using spatial computing.

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