Armies are going to treat wounded with AR telemedicine

At the end of May, 2019 the Ministry of Defence of Great Britain decided to sign the new contract for supply of military surgeons with technologies of augmented reality (AR), having selected £1.4 million for two years of developments.

The Ministry of Defence looks for developers of the digital platform of AR telemedicine which will use the military communication networks and personal electronic devices connected to a cloud service. This platform will allow to provide full visual and sound interaction in real time between surgical crew in tent/hardly accessible/floating hospital and specialists from Great Britain, using the mixed or augmented reality.

Armies are going to treat wounded with AR telemedicine

It is supposed that the new digital platform will allow military-medical crews to visualize recommendations or instructions of the advising surgeon which will be imposed using AR technologies on an operational field in real time. The network of a set should be ciphered and easily replaced, and the additional hardware – commercially available. Specialized network equipment will be provided by the ministry and will be integrated with the existing systems of communication / the unidirectional channels. In the contract the number of the expected end users is not specified.

The Ministry of Defence notes that throughput should not exceed capabilities of the army platform of augmented reality 2 Mbps — this speed is considered sufficient taking into account that the Microsoft Hololens headset estimates the recommended capacity for optimal work of the removed assistant at 1.5 Mbps. However the army platform should provide uninterrupted connection with transfer lag of a data packet of 600 milliseconds and a possibility of easy reset in case of complete power failure in network.^[1]

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