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On Google Glass, eye contact and the patient exam
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Google recently announced an arrangement with Vision Service Plan (VSP) in which VSP would provide frames custom designed for Google Glass, Google’s not-yet-released wearable computer monitor.
While this new device has all kinds of implications for texting while driving, secretly photographing others with its built-in camera and faking one’s way through cocktail party conversation as an expert in every subject, not all uses of Google Glass will be nefarious — or cheesy, for that matter.
I can see a genuinely useful application for Google Glass for the health care provider. During patient visits, we need to review information from the medical record, yet we need to make eye contact during an interview with a patient. In the past, with paper records, how often were our faces buried in the chart instead of looking at the patient? With computerized records, how obnoxious is it for a doctor to be huddled in a corner tapping away at a keyboard, looking at a monitor instead of attending to the patient visually? Personally, rather than typing on a computer in a corner in the room, I have a scribe who follows me from exam to exam. She is responsible for recording information in the computer, which I can check over at the end of the visit before signing off. Meanwhile, I can retrieve needed information from an iPad that is compatible with my NextGen EHR system. But even an iPad distracts my eyes from visually paying attention to the patient.
Does Google Glass offer us a way to do both? With this device, the provider theoretically can face the patient while simultaneously bringing up and viewing chart information on the patient’s medical history, imaging studies and outside reports. While one of the doctor’s eyes attends to the tiny Google Glass screen, a small turn of the head can align the other, non-fixating eye with the patient’s face, making it difficult for the patient to perceive a break in eye contact. Controlling the screen would be as easy as using a presentation mouse unobtrusively held in the lap.
But beware, doctor: There is no substitute for actually paying attention to the patient. This is not your opportunity to catch up on The Wall Street Journal, play Tetris or watch YouTube videos forwarded by your brother-in-law. In fact, only time will tell, as this technology becomes available, whether patients would appreciate increased eye contact or find it distracting to wonder what the doctor is actually looking at.
Once we have wearable monitors like Google Glass in our hands (or on our heads), we can then address the question of not whether we can use this new technology, but whether we should.