A Texas hospital is experimenting with hologram technology for doctors to see patients. Some health care experts wonder if it’s beneficial.
A patient walks into a hospital room, sits down and starts talking to a doctor. Only in this case, the doctor is a hologram.
It might sound like science fiction, but it is the reality for some patients at Crescent Regional Hospital in Lancaster, Texas.
In May, the hospital group began offering patients the ability to see their doctor remotely as a hologram through a partnership with Holoconnects, a digital technology firm based in the Netherlands.
Each Holobox — the company’s name for its 440-pound, 7-foot-tall device that displays on a screen a highly realistic, 3-D live video of a person — costs $42,000, with an additional annual service fee of $1,900.
The high-quality image gives the patient the feeling that a doctor is sitting inside the box, when in reality the doctor is miles away looking into cameras and displays showing the patient.
The system allows the patient and doctor to have a telehealth visit in real time that feels more like an in-person conversation. For now, the service is used mostly for pre- and postoperative visits.