Editor's perspective December 2022
Joseph W.Y. Lau · International Journal of Surgery · 2022
In the November Editor's Perspective, I have defined the two rapidly growing and applied digital fields: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). As the other terms which have also been used, including Extended Reality (ER), Mixed Reality (MR), and Inter Reality (IR), to refer to different combinations of AR and VR, I shall focus to talk on the applications of AR and VR only in this Editor's Perspective December 2022. 1. Augmented Reality applications 1.1. Medicine and healthcare AR in medicine and healthcare can vary from allowing medical students or medical trainees to train in AR environment, to telemedicine that enables medical specialists to deliver real time information to a distant geographical region to support diagnosis, surgical operations and treatment plans. Models have been designed to allow surgeons to plan operations before surgery based on patient's condition. AR diagnostic tools have been developed with diagnostic accuracies comparable to experienced radiologists. AR has also been shown to improve operations of healthcare systems. 1.2. Classroom education In addition to medical education and specialist trainee training, the use of AR has become widespread in universities, schools and classrooms. Teachers and educators are now building up student's learning experience with AR. 1.3. Conferences and meetings AR can enable speakers, discussants and delegates to attend a conference without being physically present at the meeting. 1.4. Business logistics AR presents a variety of opportunities to increase efficiency and cost savings across many areas of business logistics, including transportation, warehousing and route optimization. 1.5. Retail In the current retail environment, shoppers use smartphones to compare prices or look up additional information. AR apps have been developed so that shoppers can use to facilitate their choices of products. 1.6. Design and modeling From interior design to architecture and construction, AR is helping professionals to visualize their final products during the creative process and to allow them to virtually step into their buildings and spaces to see how their designs might look. Urban planners can even model how the city layout might look. 1.7. Repair and maintenance This is a big industrial use of AR for repair and maintenance of complex equipments e.g. a motor car and a MRI machine. AR can allow useful information to be obtained on the spot to suggest potential fixes and to point out potential trouble areas. 1.8. Tourism industry In addition to providing reviews on tourism sites to information websites, AR presents a huge opportunity for travel brands and agents to give potential tourists an immersive experience before they travel. 1.9. Entertaining business AR provides a great marketing opportunity to build deep bonds between performing artists, or the branded characters of an entertainment company with audiences. 1.10. Military AR is helping military forces in maintenance, repair and overhaul industry, enhancing how military forces create, operate and maintain their complex assets, improving service executive, assisting field medics in their training with remote guidance from experienced surgeons during emergency procedures and in displaying an animated terrain for military intervention planning. 2. Virtual reality application There are a lot of similarities between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. However, there are many more uses of VR which range from academic research, through engineering, design, business, arts and entertainment. VR has been used to produce sets of data to develop new models, training methods, communication and inter action procedures. The possibilities are endless. The only stumbling blocks are time, costs and technological limitations. There are also the issues of ergonomics, specifically the need to design systems which are user friendly and not likely to cause problems like motion sickness. If these problems are solved, there is an exciting future for virtual reality. In this December issue of International Journal of Surgery, there is only one retrospective study comparing “Surgical outcomes and learning curves for robotic versus laparoscopic living donor hepatectomy”. The study concluded that robotic surgery resulted in less intraoperative blood loss with comparative postoperative outcomes as laparoscopic surgery. There are 23 correspondences, including 8 Letters to Editor on infectious diseases, 10 Letters to Editor on various topics which are of interest to surgeons, 4 Uninvited Commentaries on 4 different articles previously published in International Journal of Surgery, and 1 Reply to a Commentary on a previous article published in our Journal. There is a decreasing number of Letters to Editor in this December issue, with less Letters on COVID-19 (n = 2), monkeypox (n = 2) and a single Letter to each of the following infectious diseases (poliomyelitis, leptospirosis, tomato flu and yellow fever). Christmas is approaching. May I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.