This is a great augmentation tool that surely will improve the diagnosis and the odds of explaining heart failures to parents. As some of you might know my daughter was born with a heart failure.
Virtual Reality Helps to Treat Babies’ Hearts
I’m not sure that this item totally falls in the “Technologies of Cooperation” category in the Smart Mobs acception. But it is really a neat collaborative use of technology, and it can save lives too. So, I guess it’s smart enough to be mentioned in this space.
In Denmark, about 350 babies need to be operated each year because of heart defect. And their hearts are very small, so it’s hard to know the exact kind of defect before the operation. This is why the Aarhus University Hospital is using virtual reality software to model babies’ hearts, according to BBC News. Now, surgeons and doctors can visualize a magnified heart in 3D before planning cardiac surgery. This also allows a better communication with parents which can understand what’s wrong with their babies before the intervention.
As the percentage of affected babies, about one per cent, is probably the same in many other countries, let’s hope this software will be widely distributed. Congratulations to these Danish doctors and software writers for this brilliant usage of technology. This summary contains more details and pictures.
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