A patient walks into a hospital room, sits down and starts talking to a doctor. Only in this case, the doctor is a hologram.
It might sound like science fiction, but it is the reality for some patients at Crescent Regional Hospital in Lancaster, Texas.
In May, the hospital group began offering patients the ability to see their doctor remotely as a hologram through a partnership with Holoconnects, a digital technology firm based in the Netherlands.
Each Holobox — the company’s name for its 440-pound, 7-foot-tall device that displays on a screen a highly realistic, 3-D live video of a person — costs $42,000, with an additional annual service fee of $1,900.
The high-quality image gives the patient the feeling that a doctor is sitting inside the box, when in reality the doctor is miles away looking into cameras and displays showing the patient.
The system allows the patient and doctor to have a telehealth visit in real time that feels more like an in-person conversation. For now, the service is used mostly for pre- and postoperative visits.
Crescent Regional’s executives, who plan to expand the service to traditional appointments, believe it improves the patient’s remote experience.
“The physicians are able to have a much different impact on the patient,” said Raji Kumar, the managing partner and chief executive of Crescent Regional. “The patients feel like the physician is right there.”
But experts are skeptical about whether a hologram visit is significantly better than 2-D telehealth options like Zoom or FaceTime.
In medicine, technological advancements are judged by their ability to improve access to care, decrease its cost or improve its quality, said Dr. Eric Bressman, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I don’t know of any data to support the idea that this would improve the quality of the visit beyond a usual telemedicine visit,” said Dr. Bressman, who has expertise in digital medicine.
Ms. Kumar said one of the ways a hologram improves the telehealth experience is the large screen and sophisticated camera that allow a doctor to see the patient’s full body, which is useful to judge characteristics like gait or range of motion.
The camera could be handy in a physical therapy setting, said Dr. Chad Ellimoottil, the medical director of virtual care for University of Michigan Health System.
Steve Sterling, the managing director of the North American division of Holoconnects, said some of the hologram’s benefits are less tangible but still significantly improve the patient’s experience.
