How an iPod Touch helped perform a surgery

How an iPod Touch helped perform a surgery

Information technology mingling with medicine is nothing new nowadays. However, every time something happens in this regard, it captures the imagination of all. The latest in this string of events is an iPod Touch in the hands of a few surgeons in India.

Until now, a device like iPod Touch was looked upon as something that lets us listen to great music or say, check our emails. Vijay C. Bose, an orthopedic surgeon in Chennai and some of his counterparts in Memphis and Mumbai had other ideas though. The surgeons used their iPod Touch in the surgical room, not to listen to Bryan Adams or Eminem; but to conduct hip and knee replacements!

It was an iPod Touch application named DASH, innovatively designed software that helped the doctor to perform a Birmingham Hip Resurfacing procedure on Guy Williams, a basketball coach from the United States. Its functioning capability is similar to that of any GPS device in use today. When it comes to precision and such other matters that a surgeon is concerned about, a DASH enabled iPod Touch could be of greater use than a computer.

Doctors declare that the device is 99% accurate in assisting them to manoeuvre to the exact location of the joint to be replaced. More important is the fact that the three-dimensional vision helps the surgeon to make any level of fine adjustments that he would like to make. Since its small size makes it easily fit in the palm of the surgeon's hand, the device is hugely convenient when compared to the otherwise huge monitors mounted on the walls of the surgical rooms.

In the patient's perspective, it becomes a cost-effective option as well. It was the collective collaboration of experts in Memphis, US and Apollo and Breach Candy Hospitals in India that triggered the birth of this innovative software.

From iPhone App like ''Dr. SexyTime'' that offered Virtual Bedside Sex Coaching to DASH, the merging of Information Technology and medicine has come a long way. It is no wonder that universities in the US are looking at distributing iPhones and iPod Touches to students instead of MacBooks.