Customer Spotlight on MediThinQ
MediThinQ designs and manufactures wearable smart glass solutions that enable free sight and comfortable surgery posture for medical staff. MediThinQ uses augmented reality (AR) to help surgeons using imaging equipment like a laparoscope or an endoscope see the image through an AR lens so they no longer have to turn around mid-surgery. Instead, the image is right in front of them during the procedure. The company already has FDA (USA), CE-MDR (EU), PMDA (Japan), KFDA (Korea) and TGA (Australia) certifications.
Jin Lee, Senior Vice President of MediThinQ elaborates on their technology and the Lumus’ AR displays that are a key component to their product.
How do doctors/hospitals benefit from your technology? How are you changing the healthcare industry?
Surgeons suffer from accumulated fatigue and discomfort as they rely on images on a monitor to perform the surgery. They must always keep their eyes on the surgery field and at the same time have to look up at the monitor, which means they have to turn their head back and forth during long surgery. The constant motion of turning their head back and forth causes all kinds of chronic illness to the clinician’s neck, eye, shoulder, and other parts of their body. With our solution, surgeons can bring the images of the monitor directly in front of their eyes seamlessly. Since our solution is mainly based on wireless technology, they can also have increased mobility, convenience, and efficiency.
Our solution allows the entire operating room to have a full view of the surgeon’s gaze on a single screen, which leads to fast and accurate treatment and enhancement of operation efficiency so hospitals can benefit from saving on operating time and costs associated with the surgery. By replacing bulky monitors with our solution, hospitals are also able to use their operating room space more effectively.
What reactions do you get from hospitals/doctors after using your technology?
Below are some real examples from hospitals and doctors after using our technology.
1. During laparoscopic surgery, there were many times where the assistant medical staff had to forcefully help change the patient’s position or posture, but the burden on the assistant medical staff was greatly reduced by wearing smart glasses.
2. In rectal mesenteric surgery there is an advantage to using your smart glasses because the operation does not need to stop because you can directly see the surroundings while wearing smart glasses during suturing.
3. The image quality was not very different from the normal monitor resolution, so I did not feel any discomfort during surgery.
4. During rectal cancer surgery, the surgeon enters a narrow space and performs the operation while looking at the monitor. Using this product, surgery became possible with comfortable posture and visibility.
5. Long-term surgery may last for more than six or 7 hours. Naturally, your shoulders and muscles may be strained, but this product was able to secure comfortable posture and vision, which relieved the burden and seemed to shorten the operation time.
6. The brightness of the image looks good and the brightness adjustment settings work well.
How does the Lumus technology add to your product capabilities?
When looking for displays for our medical smart glasses we were looking for an enabler of high-definition images, a small form factor, and the capability to project images onto the outside world so that surgeons can view the surgical field and images simultaneously. We also needed the battery power to last longer than three hours, which is a necessity for the medical industry. Lumus’ technology was the best solution on the market that enabled all of our requirements.
Why did you choose to work with Lumus?
After examining numerous waveguide-related technologies available on the market, we knew Lumus would be the best partner because of their advanced technology and the possibility that future technological development would bring.
How does Lumus enable your company to develop more features/products for the industry?
In order for micro displays to be distributed on a larger scale, our products must be smaller and lighter than other solutions while achieving a higher image quality, which provides users with a more comfortable fit and a more satisfying user experience. We believe that Lumus is pursuing technology development in this direction, and we are expecting that Lumus will be able to provide an even lighter and more advanced solution in the future.