'Explorers' test Google Glass before it goes on sale

When Dr. Heather Evans, a trauma surgeon at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, stepped into the operating room wearing an eyeglasses-like, Internet-connected device known as Google Glass, she quickly realized its potential and its pitfalls.

With Glass, if she was in the middle of surgery and encountered an unexpected or unfamiliar condition — a rare tumor, say — she could use real-time video to show it to the world's expert and receive help.

With Glass' eye-level screen, which projects information right onto the wearer's retina, she could instantly see relevant parts of a patient's chart or get lab results.

And she would never have to put down her surgical instruments or turn away from her patient on the operating table.

As a teacher, she could have her students wear Glass and see through their eyes just where they were having trouble as they learned a difficult procedure — putting in a large, intravenous catheter known as a "central line," for example.

Evans is one of about 8,000 people nationwide selected by Google as "explorers," testing and experimenting with uses for Glass, expected to be available for sale next year.

Like her fellow surgeon/explorers, Evans won the chance to spend $1,500 on the device by penning a winning tweet early this year, finishing the phrase: ifihadglass …

Think of it as a smartphone, wearable video camera and computer rolled into one, with the ability to "see" — and instantly transmit — almost precisely what the wearer is seeing.

Like other surgeons, Evans is excited about the potential of this new device. But she also has learned that Glass has technical issues that, for now, make it less than ideal in the operating room, as well as difficult privacy concerns.

Some arise because of complex federal privacy laws, which govern the transmission of patient information, including photographs or videos. Other privacy issues come up just from wearing Glass.

If she wore Glass while walking down a hospital hallway, Evans said, she could be accused of violating privacy.

Glass has particularly prickled privacy advocates, even earning its own Urban Dictionary epithet — "Glasshole" — for those who flaunt their early access, wear Glass into private spaces such as restrooms or instruct the device — "OK, Glass, take a video" — in public.

To win her spot, she linked to a YouTube video showing an event rarely caught on camera: a man's heart attack and resuscitation. A BBC crew, shooting a documentary on an emergency helicopter service, had just arrived at its office when the dispatcher suddenly slumped.

The crew kept the cameras rolling as emergency workers gave the man CPR and shocked him with a defibrillator, saving his life.

"ifihadglass," Evans tweeted, "I would capture more events like this to learn how we can take better care of patients."

Like some of her fellow surgeon/explorers — a small percentage of the explorers — Evans can't say enough, fast enough, about the potential of Glass.

"If you talk honestly to any surgeon, they will admit they encounter things all the time they've never seen before, with varying levels of comfort," she said. "Immediately, you could have somebody else's eyes on this problem."

In trauma, in critical care, surgery and medicine in general, "we try to learn from the things that happen," Evans said.

The BBC crew's unexpected capture of the emergency workers' efforts could be deliberate with Glass, she thought. "We could look back and say, 'OK, what did they do right, what did they do wrong, how can we learn from this ... ?' "

Long before Evans took Glass into the OR, she began wearing the device outside the hospital ­— at dinner, on public transportation, walking or riding her bike.

She wore it to become familiar with it, she said, and because she enjoyed the reaction from people. "I would say it's probably the single most illuminating thing that's happened to me since I became a surgeon, outside of learning a specific procedure, because it brings out this wonderment," she said. Even so, it was months before she finally wore Glass into the OR — with the patient's permission, she notes, and restrictions on the video.

"With any new technology, you don't bring it into a patient-care setting immediately upon seeing it for the first time," she says. "I needed to have a real comfort level with them."

"I think interacting with the device when you're concentrating on the patient is almost impossible," Evans says.