Apple Vision Pro for Healthcare: "The Ultimate Display"? -- Entering the Wonderland of Precision Medicine
This is an incremental perspective on applying an existing technology to the medical domain, potentially aiding clinicians in precision medicine tasks.
The paper explores whether Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset can address clinical challenges in healthcare, such as improving clinician efficiency and patient interaction, though specific results or numbers are not provided.
At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2023, Apple introduced the Vision Pro. The Vision Pro is a Mixed Reality (MR) headset, more specifically it is a Virtual Reality (VR) device with an additional Video See-Through (VST) capability. The VST capability turns the Vision Pro also into an Augmented Reality (AR) device. The AR feature is enabled by streaming the real world via cameras to the (VR) screens in front of the user's eyes. This is of course not unique and similar to other devices, like the Varjo XR-3. Nevertheless, the Vision Pro has some interesting features, like an inside-out screen that can show the headset wearers' eyes to "outsiders" or a button on the top, called "Digital Crown", that allows you to seamlessly blend digital content with your physical space by turning it. In addition, it is untethered, except for the cable to the battery, which makes the headset more agile, compared to the Varjo XR-3. This could actually come closer to the "Ultimate Display", which Ivan Sutherland had already sketched in 1965. Not available to the public yet, like the Ultimate Display, we want to take a look into the crystal ball in this perspective to see if it can overcome some clinical challenges that - especially - AR still faces in the medical domain, but also go beyond and discuss if the Vision Pro could support clinicians in essential tasks to spend more time with their patients.