Pristine Glassware Raises $5.4 In Funding
As you know, Google Glass is an innovative wearable device that has been used in a wide range of activities, from sports, to education (a few days ago we told you about a pilot program that will begin in Spring 2015 at the California State University, Dominguez Hills, a program that will allow students and teachers to wear Google Glass devices during class) and even health care. Many surgeons have used Google Glass as an educational tool (most of them streaming surgeries); Google’s wearable device has even been used to take hospitalized children on virtual tours. The popularity of Google Glass in the medical field will only increase with time and in this article we will talk about another such example.
The main subject of this article is a healthcare startup dedicated to wearables. The startup’s name is and it has developed a Glassware that allows medical professionals to offer and receive help via video streaming. Basically, a medical student for example can get advice from a doctor (or he / she can assist during a live streaming surgery) without having to meet the doctor in person. The app offers many benefits: we already mentioned that medical students can learn from experienced doctors without having to physically be in the same room; even experienced doctors can benefit form the app as they could live stream a surgery and get advice from other doctors.
It is worth mentioning that Pristine’s video app for Google Glass is the only commercial app that received HIPAA compliance. HIPAA compliance is a set of federal regulations put in place to ensure that a patient’s sensitive medical data remains secure from hackers and other third parties with malicious intentions. To get the HIPAA compliance, the company made sure that its Google Glass app does not record videos streamed using it. However, if a doctor using Pristine’s Glassware wants or needs to record a surgical procedure for example, he can do so. But this only happens with the consent of the doctor using the app.
We already mentioned that Google Glass found its way to the medical field a long time ago and the wearable device has already been used to stream surgical procedures and other medical related activities. However, recently Pristine Evangelist Lucas Schlager said during an interview with : “We’re really just scratching the surface with what Pristine can offer to the medical field [...] What if people could begin getting diagnosed in the ambulance on the way to a hospital?” The company hopes that its app will actually replace camera carts and “robot nurses” (which are actually quite expensive, since they can feature a price tag of $100,000).
By comparison, Pristine has a fixed monthly fee in which it includes the hardware (Google Glass). Not only is this a lot better than paying $100,000 for camera carts and robot nurses (which are used by many medical centers throughout the United States) but Pristine also announced that if Google releases a new, updated version of Google Glass, it will provide clients with the new version, replacing the old wearable device. The startup recently received $5.4 million for their health Glassware. The company announced that it is going to use the money to more people and further develop its app and services. There are currently twenty hospitals using Pristine’s service and the company hopes to increase the number of its clients using the newly received funds. What are your thoughts on Pristine’s vision for the future of health care, a future that include Google Glass. Leave a comment in the dedicated section below.