Doctor out of town? No problem — they can be beamed in as a 3D image.
Crescent Regional Hospital outside Dallas, Texas, has become the first in the country to offer doctor appointments with a holographic machine, allowing overworked medical specialists, who often have to visit multiple medical centers in a week and sometimes even a day, to see more patients.
It also comes with the added bonus of turning your typically dreary telehealth visit into something a bit more lifelike and personable — though of course, there's no beating the real thing.
"I can see the three dimensions of the anesthesiologist's head, legs, and torso in lifelike detail," wrote journalist Mark Dent of his holographic doctor experience in an article for Texas Monthly magazine. "Only the background — a white void — reveals she's not with us."
The holographic device is called a Holobox, designed by the Netherlands startup Holoconnect. With the stature of an oversized vending machine, the Holobox more or less functions as an enormous booth that can display a life-sized image of a physician or anyone else calling in.
The holographs are created using a transparent LCD screen, which is practically invisible, housed behind a layer of anti-glare glass. As such, the images aren't being projected into 3D space, but instead create the illusion of three-dimensionality.
It's not quite "Star Wars," but the effect is apparently compelling. Dr. Olayinka Adepitan, the anesthesiologist interviewed by Texas Monthly, called the tech a "game changer." She found that patients were more attentive during her Holobox call-ins than during typical telehealth visits (like over Zoom).
"The longer we talk, the more I forget that in reality Adepitan is at a clinic in Farmers Branch, about thirty miles north," Dent wrote.
As the first hospital to deploy the technology this way, Crescent is currently using the Holobox for pre-surgery and post-surgery consultations. Adepitan told Texas Monthly that it allows her to discharge patients sooner than if she had to wait to drive to the county, a trip she's only scheduled to make twice a week.
Thanks to the tech, Adepitan simply reports to the nearby medical center she normally works at, and sits in front of a camera and white screen to beam herself in remotely. She views patients through a TV monitor, while a local nurse does the work of physically examining the patient.
As Texas Monthly notes, rural areas across the country are chronically short-staffed of medical professionals. Rural Texas has suffered dozens of hospital closures in the past decade. Among doctors, there is enthusiasm for telehealth, tech-inflected or otherwise, as one way of relieving the shortage — but some stress that it's not the be-all and end-all.
"We see telehealth as a very important innovation for rural communities," John Henderson, CEO of Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, told Texas Monthly. "We do not see it as a silver bullet."
It's also not cheap. The Holobox costs Crescent hospital $65,000 upfront, on top of $1,200 a month in maintenance. But the hospital's CEO Raji Kumar, who pushed for the tech, argues that offering holographic appointments may be a way for struggling rural hospitals to retain patients — and therefore make money — who may forego a local medical center since it can't attract top specialists.
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