Doctors At Ohio State University Were The First To Transmit A Surgery Live Using Google Glass

We may not be there yet, but a surgeon at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center just became the first in the United States to consult long-distance with a colleague using Google Glass, which provided the doctors a live, point-of-view video from the operating room.

Dr. Christopher Kaeding, who performed the surgery on August 21, is the director of sports medicine at Ohio State. While operating on the ACL of Paula Kobalka, 47, of Westerville, Ohio, he used the front-facing camera on Google Glass to record and transmit the surgery to an audience miles away through a Google Hangout video chat.

In the future, doctors with Glass could also use voice commands to "call up x-ray or MRI images of their patient, pathology reports or reference materials, collaborating live, and face-to-face with colleagues via the Internet, anywhere in the world," the university said in a statement.

This opportunity was made possible through Google's Explorer Program for Glass, a contest that was open to anyone who wanted to beta test the computerized headset for a fee of $1,500. Only limited to a few thousand people, Kaeding's colleague, Dr. Ismail Nabeel, an assistant professor of general internal medicine at Ohio State, was chosen to participate. He then partnered with Kaeding for the surgery, helping to test the technology that could drastically change the future of medicine.