How this medtech startup is using VR to change surgery in Japan

Photo credit: Holoeyes.

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Disrupting Japan where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with Japanese entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

The medical industry is one of the world’s most highly regulated and hard to disrupt industries. But there are a number of innovative startups that have ways of improving things with simple, incremental changes that will make life better for everyone.

Holoeyes is one of these startups. I sat down with its CEO and CTO Naoji Taniguchi, and we talked about how their VR solution is winning over doctors in Japan and changing the way surgery is done.

The application builds up a VR model of organs from CT scans, lets doctors analyze and discuss these matters much more efficiently, and is used to train new doctors. What’s interesting is, unlike many VR companies, Holoeyes’ tech is already in use today.

What is the application and how is it used? 

Holoeyes makes customized models for each patient’s organs. Our product also helps in communications between doctors and surgery team members and training senior and new doctors.

We partially use Diacom Viewer, a viewer of CT scan images, to build the VR models. Now, we are trying to use deep learning to automate, create, and make part of a model from CT scan images.

Before our product, doctors had to write in tickets for some of the surgery procedures. So, it was very complex. Using our product, doctors can do surgical procedures with game controllers and headset displays. It’s like a car racing game. And in using VR, we can see the movements at any angle.

We also archive the models on our crowd server, so we’ll be like a GitHub for surgery, where patients can have their data in public or private repositories.

But aren’t there very strong laws about sharing patient data?

Yeah, there are. But the objective of our patients is to be cured, so data is not important for them. But for doctors, it’s crucial.

Nowadays, data is very personal. But we use polygons, where data doesn’t have personal information—name, age, the patient’s living address—attached.

What platforms are you using for this?

Well, for hardware, we are using HTC Vive and Microsoft Hololens. Both devices have good points and bad points. For HTC Vive, it’s a little bit expensive, but it can display a very detailed, high polygon model, and has good personal tracking.

The Microsoft Hololens is very cheap. We use crowd servers to store our data, and the device downloads that data.

How did you and your co-founder come together on this project? 

I have a friend who works as an editor and his publisher had 36 medical books for families. The old data was digital, so he told me he could use some data services using the script data.

Who’s using Holoeyes today? 

What is the big problem that your product solves? 

Are doctors and hospitals willing to use your product or is there resistance?

When do you plan to start charging for Holoeyes?

If you could change anything about Japan, what would it be?