Healthcare

During the millions of years they've been on earth horseshoe crabs have developed a trick that can save our lives even now — and may be especially useful in the fight against healthcare-associated infections. The living fossils we call horseshoe crabs are not real crabs, and ...more

The growing list of dangerous antibiotic resistant organisms has just acquired three new members. Researchers have discovered three new species of Klebsiella bacteria, all of which can cause life-threatening infections and have genes that make them resistant to commonly used a ...more

In this Tuesday's Brief Reality report, there's a trio of stories from the healthcare world where augmented reality is helping out with surgical microscopes, asthma treatment, and other diagnostic and treatment tools. There's also something for all of you AR/VR storytellers ou ...more

If you've been to the doctor enough, you know that the medical staff can make a variety of mistakes from time to time. They're human and that's normal, but errors in the medical field can often have significant negative impacts. At Boston's 2016 HoloHacks event, a team of deve ...more

This is the very first article in my series on setting up a Mac for hacking. In this series, I will be operating under the assumption that you have a clean install of macOS (previously OS X). If you aren't starting with a clean installation, there may be a few differences, but ...more

It's not easy staying fit and healthy these days with addicting phones, oversized portions, and long workdays, to name just a few things. To succeed, it takes work, commitment, and an understanding of your mind and body — and your iPhone can help you with some of that. While A ...more

Twelve-year old Rory Staunton took a dive for a basketball during gym class and came up with a cut on his arm. The school nurse applied a couple of band-aids, without cleaning the cut, and off he went. In approximately three days, hospital physicians told his parents there was ...more

The best go-to method for reducing your risk of infection is to wash your hands. Next time you reach for the soap, here is some news you can use. For years, soaps and healthcare products touted their "antibacterial" properties. While soap was good, antibacterial soap had to b ...more

Fashion designer Manel Torres has teamed up with scientists at Imperial College London and designers at the Royal College of Art to invent spray-on clothing, an instant, sprayable, non-woven fabric-in-a-can. The innovative product (called Fabrican) promises to be useful in th ...more

While the airline, casino, cruise, and hotel industries are asking for government bailouts during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the US are giving away its apps and services for a limited time. So while you're stuck at home, keep your mind off of coronavirus with free ...more

Crusty, itchy, red eyes? There is a decent chance you could have conjunctivitis, or pink eye, an infection of the thin lining around the eye and the eyelid, caused by bacteria, an allergen, virus, or even your contact lenses. Whatever the cause — you call up your doctor to get ...more

We often discuss the augmented reality efforts coming from the biggest players in Silicon Valley like Google, Facebook, Apple, and others, but one name that keeps coming up when you really begin to dig into the AR space is Vuzix. Since the late '90s, the company has quietly bu ...more

Automatic phone menus are the worst. You call the number, listen to prerecorded prompts, press button, listen, press button, listen, press button, listen, until you're routed or connected to the right extension, directory, menu, person, or whatever. But you can bypass these au ...more

If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more

A terrifying antibiotic-resistant superbug, one thought to only infect hospital patients, has made its debut in the real world. For the first time ever, the superbug carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infected six people who hadn't been in or around a hospital in at ...more

People infected with HIV take many different types of pills every day to decrease the amount of virus in their body, live a longer and healthier life, and to help prevent them from infecting others. That could all be in the past as new clinical trials testing the safety and ef ...more

Medical training technology company CAE Healthcare has given birth to the latest example of how augmented reality can help to build practical operating room skills for doctors and nurses. The company's newest product is called LucinaAR, which harnesses the power of the Microso ...more

Think you have what it takes to amputate your own arm? What about somebody else's foot? Now, thanks to the wide array of mobile apps available from the iTunes App Store, you might not need to attend medical school to perform a tracheostomy. Okay, so that's not really true—iPh ...more

We know that healthcare-related facilities can be fertile ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but recent research suggests your produce aisle might be too. In a presentation at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers from California State Univers ...more

Lyme is a growing threat as we move into warmer weather in the US. Researchers have said this year could be one of the worst for this tick-borne disease, as a skyrocketing mouse population and warmer temperatures increase the risk. Knowing where this risk is highest is going ...more

Staphylococcus aureus is a widespread bacteria — about a third of us have it on our body right now — usually in our nose or on our skin. And it probably isn't causing an infection. But, about 1% of people who have Staphylococcus aureus present have a type that is resistant to ...more

The HoloLens is a natural medium for 3D data visualization, which offers a far more ideal approach over 2D screens to managing multiple resources simultaneously and grasping the bigger picture. We've already seen how management is using holograms to oversee cities, firefighter ...more

It's safe to say that we can call the annual ranking of AR investments a holiday tradition at Next Reality. Following our 2018 and 2017 editions of the biggest AR investments, we've expanded the list to include the top 25 this year. While there are many familiar names at the ...more

Images captured by Microsoft's next generation Kinect depth-sensing camera that will facilitate augmented reality experiences in the next version of the HoloLens and give computer vision to untold multitudes of connected devices in enterprise facilities, have made their way in ...more

Mobile phones are not only essential for work and communication, they're quickly becoming an integral asset to our health. Your iPhone can store valuable data about fitness, nutrition, heart health, and so much more. And since iOS 11.3, your iPhone can even import a list of al ...more

While Lyme disease can be disabling, the wrong treatment for the infection can be fatal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that the bacteria that causes Lyme disease infects about 30,000 people each year. Transmitted by the blacklegged tick, Ixodes ...more

Our canine best friends could spread our bacterial worst nightmare, according to a recent study. The problem with drug-resistant bacteria is well known. Overused, poorly used, and naturally adaptive bacteria clearly have us outnumbered. As science drives hard to find alternat ...more

In case you missed it, we're in the middle of an election! Move over Obama and McCain, the WonderHowTo Awards have the best candidates! Issue of the day-- healthcare, more specifically zit care. (To explain the order sequence, this first Jackass video grossed us so far out th ...more

Your iPhone's Health app has a new medications hub that can be a one-stop destination for all the medicine, vitamins, and supplements you're taking. Adding new entries is easy and well worth the effort to get reminders to take your meds, learn about drug interactions, easily s ...more

Researchers have developed a new method that harnesses the power of augmented reality to detect a patient's heart rate using a Microsoft HoloLens and computer vision. Developed by Dr. Christophe Hurter, a professor at French Civil Aviation University, and Microsoft researcher ...more

The HoloLens has made enough of an impact on the healthcare industry for Microsoft technology partner Medivis to convince investors to pledge $2.3 million in funding for its surgical platform. On Tuesday, along with closing its seed funding round, the company unveiled its Sur ...more

Medicine, like the internet, is serious business. So when the text that appears on the labels of our medicine bottles makes about as much sense as an epileptic in a rave club, we can't help but take pause. Follow us on a journey of prescriptions and misdescriptions! Colors Do ...more

Gonorrhea infections reached a peak in 1975, then decreased until 2009, when infection rate started rising and has increased each year since. With the rise of antibiotic resistance, those numbers are only going to get worse — unless we find new treatments against the bacteria. ...more

It won't come as a surprise to hear that your cell phone, tablet, and laptop are loaded with bacteria and other organic material. While most of these bacteria are harmless, there are good reasons to reduce the capability of your mobile devices to infect you—or other people. H ...more

The intestinal parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis has a dramatically increased infection rate this summer, and the source is still unknown, the CDC advised today. 2017 is a good year for Cyclospora looking for homes to start their families and a bad year for those of us who don' ...more

Hospitals are places we go to get well, and we don't expect to get sick or sicker there. But a study from researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and Cleveland VA Medical Center in Ohio found that hospital floors in patient room ...more

Smartglass maker ThirdEye Gen, Inc. has introduced an augmented reality solution for enterprises that includes their X1 Smartglass and a suite of software applications that enable completely hands-free computing. The market for enterprise augmented reality solutions is alread ...more

The human body is amazingly complex, and seeing inside one poses a variety of challenges whether you're dealing with an actual human or some kind of facsimile. Mixed reality offers the ability to get the best of both worlds by creating a holographic teaching tool for human ana ...more

Findings from a mouse study suggest that the Zika virus infection may have serious reproductive consequences for men. Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that often produces no symptoms in men or women. Those who do have symptoms usually experience a minor rash, low-grade fever, p ...more

The HoloLens has become a frequent sight in medical facilities around the world, but a new demonstration shows just how seamlessly it can be integrated into traditional medical procedures to improve the experience for physicians and patients alike. Professor Shafi Ahmed, a co ...more

Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism ...more

Having a Clostridium difficile infection means stomach pains, diarrhea, fever, and loss of appetite, and if the symptoms weren't bad enough, the disease often reoccurs. Now, new research has found an increased risk of recurrence in people who take medication to treat their sto ...more

Joe McKenna died when he was 30 years old. A young married man with his future ahead of him, he was cleaning up the station where he worked as a fireman. Struck by a piece of equipment fallen from a shelf, Joe complained of a sore shoulder. Over the next week, Joe worsened and ...more

It hasn't even been eight years since Candida auris was discovered—cultured and identified from the ear canal of a patient in Japan—and now it's drug-resistant, setting up residence in hospitals, killing patients, and wreaking havoc across the globe. The yeast, C. auris, find ...more

Unfortunately, the very places we go to receive health care put us at risk for becoming infected with superbugs, bacteria exposed to so many antibiotics that they have become immune to their effects. Clostridium difficile (C. diff) is one such bacteria. It causes inflammation ...more

Four months have passed since Mojo Vision emerged from stealth, and we are no closer to seeing exactly what its "invisible computing" technology looks like. But we do know that Google is impressed enough to back the technology from the startup, as the company's AI-centric ven ...more

Some types of bacterial infections are notoriously tough to treat — and it's not all due to antibiotic resistance. The bacteria themselves are rugged and hard to penetrate with drugs. New research may have solved that problem. A group of researchers from the University of Ill ...more

With a death rate of one in five, sepsis is a fast-moving medical nightmare. New testing methods might improve your odds of survival if this infection ever hits you. While we usually think of a deadly medical condition as the result of infection with a bacteria or virus, seps ...more

Jostled in the airport, someone is coughing in line. The air looks empty but it is loaded with microbes that make their way into your body. You get sick. You give it to your family, and that's pretty much it. But what if you were so contagious that you spread it to your entire ...more

More bad news for patients who have undergone heart surgery in the past five years. A new study suggests about one-third of heater-cooler units used in cardiac procedures remain contaminated with a slow-growing, potentially fatal bacteria. Heart failure is the leading cause o ...more

As the opening act to the grand unveiling of the long-awaited HoloLens 2 at Mobile World Congress Barcelona on Sunday, Microsoft showed off the standalone Azure Kinect time of flight sensor, which also happens to supply the improved human and environmental understanding capabi ...more

The availability of space for filming immersive content has just gotten bigger with the launch of Innovation Studios by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The 7,000 square-foot facility on the Sony Pictures Studios lot will house Sony Corporation's research and development efforts ...more

Antibiotics used to prevent diseases in livestock are creating a world of hurt for humans and the soil we depend on for food. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a global health issue. The overuse, underuse, and poor use of these life-saving drugs is rapidly removing them a ...more

As if being pregnant did not come with enough worry, a new study found that certain antibiotics are linked to an increased risk of spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage — a terrifying finding for any expectant mother. The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Jo ...more

For once there is good news — surprising news, but good news — in the fight against antibiotic-resistant organisms. A recent study found that Staphylococcus aureus bacteria is becoming more sensitive to some key drugs used to treat it. Helio S. Sader, Senior Director at JMI L ...more