2020 YEAR-END ISSUE | INNOVATION & TECH TODAY 31
Human Anatomy VR and The Body VR are a
couple of apps for the popular Oculus VR
headsets that allow users to travel inside the
human body. Start up the app, and you’ll be
“shrunken” tinier than a cell and see what it’s like
to navigate the various vessels and passageways
underneath our skin. Kids will get a thrill
zooming through the arteries and veins of the
circulatory system and be in awe at the sight of
thousands of electrical signals being transmitted
around them in the brain.
Budding young surgeons may want to check
out the Medical Realities app, which places you
inside the operating room to observe a surgery.
They’re 360-degree videos of actual procedures
intended for surgical trainees and medical
students, so they might not be suitable for those
who get squeamish at the sight of blood. But, it
can give students interested in a career in
medicine an immersive look into the manpower
and equipment needed to perform a safe and
effective surgery.
For those who are put off by the site of bloodor prone to motion sickness, augmented reality
can also be an excellent learning tool. One cool
augmented reality product that we’ve used is the
Curiscope Virtuali-Tee.
It’s a seemingly normal t-shirt with an eye-
catching pixelated rib cage and spinal column
image on the front, but by pointing a
smartphone with the Curiscope app at the
image, the front of the shirt transforms into an
interactive 3D view of the one’s innards. The
various organs and systems can be explored in
greater detail, and the app can even measure
your heart rate by analyzing the subtle change in
color in your skin. It’s somewhat like a virtual
dissection or autopsy, but without the knives or
blood.
Wearable Fitness Trackers
Wearable fitness trackers have been one of the
fastest-growing consumer device segments in
recent years. Just about every year, new wearable
devices from Fitbit, Apple, and other companies
feature additional sensors and biometric
measurements in an effort to keep us moreinformed about our health.With the worldwide prevalence of childhood
obesity increasing at an alarming rate, the
growing ubiquity of fitness wearables could be
an opportunity to better educate kids about the
importance of physical fitness. Let your kids
wear a fitness tracker, even for a short period of
time, and they’ll learn about biometrics such as
heart rate, temperature, and blood oxygen and
how they change depending on their activity.
Older kids can take their biometrics further
using historical data that most fitness trackers
provide. Using statistical analysis, kids can learn
how to discover patterns and trends about their
biometrics, form hypotheses, and design
“clinical” experiments to test their theories. It’s
the ultimate personalized science experiment
that can teach kids about the basic process of
using data in research.
3D printing, virtual and augmented reality,
and wearables can be powerful learning tools. In
fact, these technologies are already being used
to learn more about our bodies and improve
healthcare.
Biomedical engineers are using 3D printers to
prototype new medical devices, surgeons use
virtual and augmented reality to train for
procedures, and researchers are using data from
wearables to gain insights into population
health. These three technologies are relatively
inexpensive and widely available to the public,
so why not use them to help prepare our next
generation of healthcare workers? QSmarter technologies can
create an interactive and
more compelling
educational experience.