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, 3D 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 preoperative and postoperative visits. Crescent Regional’s executives, who have plans to expand the service to traditional appointments, believe it improves the remote experience for the patient.
“The physicians are able to have a much different impact on the patient,” said Raji Kumar, managing partner and CEO of Crescent Regional. “The patients feel like the physician is right there.” But experts are skeptical about whether a hologram visit is significantly .
