Integrating Google Glass with Medical Students

This article published with permission from iMedicalApps.com.

I’ve been spending several hours testing Google Glass in our procedures cadaver lab to get a better understand of the device’s hardware and software capabilities.

When using the device with cadavers to practice procedures, I realized how easily medical students could integrate Glass into the anatomy lab.

Google Glass can be made to read QR codes, and then use this information to link to online content.

Anatomy instructors could essentially tag anatomical parts with QR codes and then use this feature for a wide variety of functions.

For learning

When an anatomical part is tagged in the traditional sense, it’s often done with a number because it’s difficult to spell out the entire name on a small piece of paper. The limited space makes it difficult to put any other crucial information as well. Using QR codes, medical school instructors could tag anatomical parts and then link that to robust multimedia and improve learning—not just the name of the anatomical part.

I’ll give an example. When medical students are doing the musculoskeletal block, we had to learn not only the anatomical part, but what a particular muscle did. If the deltoid muscle was tagged with a QR code, a medical student could use Glass to read the QR code, and then be presented with rich multimedia that would show them the muscle is innervated by the axillary nerve.

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