(Newswire.net — June 9, 2017) –Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist and the executive director of the Center for Body Computing at the University of Southern California, cannot be everywhere, but her digital avatar can. That’s why she and her colleagues use virtual reality technology and artificial intelligence to provide specialized care for patients anywhere in the world.
They have developed a new mobile application for a virtual care clinic called DocOn.
Now, patients can ask questions to doctor Saxon’s avatar using the application on their smartphones, which in parallel provides more time to the doctor to focus on patients with more serious health problems.
Dr. Saxon explained that in a few years, 80 percent of healthcare that is now being provided in doctors’ offices, during scheduled appointments, when a doctor and a patient are in the same room, will no longer exist.
Therefore, the application DocOn could be very important for patients who want medical information from doctors who they already know and trust.
“There are only so many experts in the world and we’re never going to be able to bring the world’s medical experts or have enough to supply the need of the entire world,” Saxon told Voice of America (VOA).
“So we can clone, if you will, many of the experts to provide care anywhere anytime, without borders, so that I can treat patients in Iran or Indonesia or India as easily as I can treat them in Los Angeles for 90 percent of the issues that come up,” she said.
Ari Shapiro, a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, has scanned himself to demonstrate how he has made the avatar for Dr. Saxon.
He believes that patients should establish a better relationship with a digital doctor if they can see the doctor’s facial expressions and gestures.
Shapiro said that displaying the doctor’s face on the application is better than getting medical advice from a drawing on the screen.
Doctor Saxon hopes that sensors on smartphones would also collect valuable medical information which could help in treating patients who have medical conditions such as arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat.
“This way, I can catch your arrhythmia when it happens, using the phone, from where you were that day. I’ll know how much activities you had,” she explained.
Dr. Saxon expects digital doctors to become a major component of personal healthcare in the future.