Clinical and surgical applications of smart glasses

BACKGROUND: With the increased efforts to adopt health information technology in the healthcare field, many innovative devices have emerged to improve patient care, increase efficiency, and decrease healthcare costs. A recent addition is smart glasses: web-connected glasses that can present data onto the lenses and record images or videos through a front-facing camera. OBJECTIVE: In this article, we review the most salient uses of smart glasses in healthcare, while also denoting their limitations including practical capabilities and patient confidentiality. METHODS: Using keywords including, but not limited to, "smart glasses", "healthcare", "evaluation", "privacy", and "development", we conducted a search on Ovid-MEDLINE, PubMed, and Google Scholar. A total of 71 studies were included in this review. RESULTS: Smart glasses have been adopted into the healthcare setting with several useful applications including, hands-free photo and video documentation, telemedicine, Electronic Health Record retrieval and input, rapid diagnostic test analysis, education, and live broadcasting. CONCLUSIONS: In order for the device to gain acceptance by medical professionals, smart glasses will need to be tailored to fit the needs of medical and surgical sub-specialties. Future studies will need to qualitatively assess the benefits of smart glasses as an adjunct to the current health information technology infrastructure.