I’m often asked where I see Kinect going next and much like the Kinect Effect advert, I put that question back on the questioner. One of the answers I give is we see it going into more and more places outside of the living room – places like schools and hospitals. In fact in the advert, there is a brief moment where you see Kinect in an operating theater.
That’s not happening tomorrow, it’s happening today, at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto. Earlier this week, Discovery Channel Canada dropped in on Sunnybrook and got a demo of how Kinect is being used.
Discovery Channel also stopped by our What’s Next booth at CES where I spoke with Ziya about natural user interfaces on Surface 2.0 and with Kinect.
As a person who has assited in surgery before I don't see any particular benefit to this application of Kinect. The advantages mentioned by the doctor in the video are already solved by a nurse who isn't scrubbed in changing the image with the mouse- no extra labour or cost.
Perhaps with the new GE alliance Microsoft will be able to provide real technological revolutions in the health care industry, but as much as I like my Kinect the future in surgery will be natural language processing, not hand gestures.
While you don't see particular benefit, doctors who actually do the operation might actually find great benefit from this since they can adjust the images precisely how the want without having to call out for an assistant. The doctor adjusts it accordingly exactly how he wants it. What I just want to get improved in this is that the gestures requires so much effort and time.