Touch Surgery raises $20 million for augmented reality surgical headsets

Touch Surgery, a tech startup based in London that develops holographic surgery headsets, raised over $20 million (£15m) from the supporters of Facebook’s Oculus headset that will help the company launch an augmented reality (AR) tool for training the most delicate points of surgery.

Trainees will wear a Microsoft Hololens headset to watch a live video stream of a professional surgeon’s operation, displayed with virtual guides that show the steps of the complete surgery.

Touch Surgery was founded in 2013 by two former surgeons – and its most recent app is filled with hundreds of video tutorials on surgical procedures. The new AR tool, Go Surgery, is being developed to let surgical trainees watch real surgeries and see a holographic step-by-step guide on their screen. Go surgery is planned to launch in 2018. The company has launched an app to test this new training approach in hospitals in the US and UK.

In an article from Telegraph, Co-founder Dr. Jean Nehme, said, “We wanted to know how we could train and perform surgery better. It is early days for this technology but we are very bullish on how augmented reality and virtual reality are going to be key technologies in the operating room of the future.”

Source: The Telegraph