March 2020. As the COVID-19 reached the UK, we had a theory that Dynamics 365 Remote Assist could work beyond industrial scenarios. It could transform healthcare.

Introducing Microsoft HoloLens 2 for remote assistance

I recently spoke with James Kinross, Senior lecturer in colorectal surgery and consultant surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare Trust NHS. “If you wind back to early March, which in COVID-19 times seems like a lifetime ago, we had a genuine amount of fear and anxiety about what was going to happen,” he said. “As it is to this day, the major issues we have is around staff protection and delivery of patient care.”

Colin Brown is CCIO at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust. His Trust has a small federated hospital with limited staffing in a semi-rural area. By the end of March, it was still uncertain as to whether the volume of patients with COVID-19 would overwhelm the NHS, hospital services, and their staffing limits.

NHS hospitals across the country, serving both adult and children in acute and convalescent care have never been tested against such pressure. Rafael Guerrero, from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, was worried that there would be delays in children’s heart surgery. He was worried his team would run out of capacity to monitor and deliver care to the whole region of North West of England, Cumbria, and North Wales.

Over the last three months, we worked with a consortium of NHS Trusts, Medical iSight, and Insight to use HoloLens 2 and Remote Assist to begin solving these problems. We recently published our initial use case on how it helps protect doctors while providing patient care.

How HoloLens 2 with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist works

We recently launched HoloLens 2 – a fully untethered, wearable holographic computer. It allows users to place 3D digital models in the room alongside them and interact with them using gestures, gaze, and voice. Mixed reality is at the forefront of transformative technologies and the impact and results are substantial.

Using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, doctors wearing the HoloLens 2 on COVID-19 wards can be heads-up and hands-free. They can hold video calls with colleagues and experts from anywhere in the world. They can receive advice, interact with the caller and the patient at the same time. Medical notes and x-rays can also be placed alongside the call in the wearer’s field of view.

In this series of blogs, I wanted to take the key learning points and share them across the healthcare community. I hope it continues to foster more dialogue on how we can use the innovations within HoloLens 2 and mixed reality to support and transform outcomes.

Defining and implementing HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist

The principle priority across the NHS Trusts has been to use the technology to improve staff safety. Advanced technology, especially remote evaluations of patient and communication between specialist care teams have made this possible, whilst maintaining social and physical barriers. Also, the consequential outcome was to limit the demand for PPE usage, enabling supply to be adequately distributed between hospitals. Individual case examples arose from local needs by specific team structures. In this blog, we will go into more details on considerations the teams took.

Measuring patient access and clinical effectiveness

Imperial NHS Trust has taken the lead on collecting qualitative data. They have collected information relating to their key outcomes of patients safety and PPE use. They have been collecting feedback from staff relating to how easy the technology is to use. They’ve also looked at the perceived impact on care quality, communication, and teamwork. In this blog, we will share more specifics along with patient feedback.

What’s next: How can other NHS Trusts get involved?

Now that we have established the use case for Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, our NHS partners are looking to embed the benefits of the HoloLens 2 as an everyday tool. To do this within healthcare, the approach they are taking is twofold: First, they are looking to create a structured approach for a wider trial to effectively demonstrate impact in a transparent and robust way. Second, they are exploring new use cases with our mixed reality Partners, who have existing applications for medical training, surgical planning, interoperative surgical capabilities, patient education, and more.

In this blog, we will share some of the examples of what our NHS Trusts are looking to do next, and also share ways for other NHS Trusts to get involved

What technology was needed to get started

HoloLens 2 is now widely available to businesses through authorised resellers such as Insight. Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is an application that can be securely managed within an enterprise environment. It is also further optimised with the Microsoft 365 and NHS recent announcements. With Medical iSight’s extensive experience with Imperial College NHS through their previous work in developing surgical guidance apps for plastic and reconstructive surgery, they were able to provide invaluable support to effective rapid deployment. They have worked with Insight across this consortium to package the best practices and created a free Remote Assist Fast Start for NHS organisations who purchase HoloLens 2 through Insight. In this blog, we’ll share more details on how to get started.

Thank you to the NHS and our partners

I’d like to thank the following for their contributions and penmanship. Colin Brown, CCIO at University Hospitals of Morecombe Bay; Guy Martin, Consulting Surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; James Kinross, Senior Lecturer and Consulting Surgeon, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trusts; Rafael Guerrero, Consultant Congenital Cardiac Surgeon, Clinical Director of Cardiac Services & Director of Innovation, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust; Phuoc Duong, Paediatric Cardiology Consultant, Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust; Andrew Lewington, Associate Medical Director of Education, Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust;  Philip Pratt, Chief Scientific Officer, Medical iSight; Wes Platel, UK Digital Innovation Lead, Insight.

It’s been the greatest privilege to work alongside this collective of amazing people within the NHS, Medical iSight, Insight, and our Microsoft teams who have truly worked above and beyond to help protect NHS staff while delivering patient outcomes.

Find out more

Defining and implementing Remote Assist use cases

Measuring patient and clinical effectiveness

What’s next: How can other NHS Trusts get involved?

What technology was needed to get started

About the author

Leila has been working on the commercial mixed reality business for the last five years and is based in the UK. She’s been working with some of the most advanced customers and partners in the world, helping them identify, pilot and deploy technologies that have a profound ability to transform their business.

Prior to joining the mixed reality team, she held several senior positions at Microsoft including leading consumer and commercial business units such as Server & Tools and Windows in the UK and Central & Eastern Europe

The post How HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist helps the NHS provide patient care appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Starting from the beginning of March, we’ve learned a tremendous amount around the use of the HoloLens 2. We now want to use this to help inform our journey as we move forward with more NHS Trusts and more use cases.

Defining the objectives for the remote assist use case

The healthcare service faces unprecedented challenge when necessities such as physical contact with patients, close teamwork, and regular face-to-face communication suddenly become a luxury.

One of our partners, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust defined their objectives as:

“The overriding priority for Imperial was to utilise the technology to improve staff safety, and as a secondary output reduce PPE use. This needed to be achieved whilst at least maintaining the same quality of care for patients. The individual use cases then were found based on team structures and staff who were keen to participate and drive the project forward.”

Guy Martin, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

On the other side of the country at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Rafael Guerrero and his team look after children with congenital heart disease in the North West of England, Cumbria, and North Wales. “We have to quickly adopt the HoloLens 2 and the Remote Assist platform to help our local specialists look after these sick children when they are waiting for the operation,” Guerrero said. “The parents need to be assured that the care of their children is not compromised, and to do this, we need good technology that is proven to work.”

Process for choosing wards and use cases

Patient care and staff safety

Imperial’s objective was to create “entirely virtual ward rounds”, using the HoloLens 2 as a way to share information and communicate more effectively “at the bedside”.

The first ward the team focussed on was the COVID-19 ward. It was flooded with patients and general medical teams would have high exposure rates. A classic ward round would include a consultant physician, with two or three juniors plus nurses. That makes a potential seven or eight frontline NHS staff exposed with each patient.

In the second ward, the team focused on an area delivering specialist invasive respiratory support. Experts are often distributed throughout the hospital so that the value of bringing in an expert into the bedside virtually is invaluable. In addition, the aerosol generating procedures utilised whilst providing respiratory support placed staff at a much higher risk of infection.

These two examples were also adopted at the Heart Centre at Alder Hey. The number of staff contact per patient during the ward round was five or seven. This was reduced to just one or two with the use of the HoloLens 2 with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist.

St. Mary’s within Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust, is also a major trauma centre, so that was another key area, alongside the surgery department. The ability for quick remote collaboration with an expert from any discipline, can have major benefits. Not only was the interpretation of the main operator communicated to the external experts, but the entire team can share direct visuals of the problem. This saves time and improves the accuracy.

Cardiac unit doctors and nurses promptly adopted this unique communication platform. This helped to deliver care at the same standard as it was before social distancing was enforced. Expert care, efficiency, or staff safety were not compromised by the physical barrier imposed by infection control.

Each of the four use cases were up and running by the end of March and in consistent use with results covered.

Remote expert advice

Morecambe Bay are a group of small, district general hospitals with limited staffing in a semi-rural area. Because of this, their use cases are focused on using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to train middle-level clinicians such as Specialist Registrars and clinical nurse specialists. They can then make Teams calls to their on-call Respiratory Consultant Physician, who may be in a different part of the hospital, or on call overnight at home, or in a different hospital in the region. This allows them to take the bedside and patient, wherever they are, and support assessments and appropriate treatment plans, including where necessary, rapid escalations of care.

The Alder Hey Heart team has also carried out a pilot supporting non-expert echocardiographers (middle grade cardiology trainees, or paediatricians with interest, or non-paediatric echocardiocardiographers) to perform complex ultrasound scans of children’s hearts remotely. Cardiologist Dr Phuoc Duong has articulated that there was “perfect vision” of the echo machine screen and the ability to guide the non-expert operator in real-time. These are also perceived as excellent training opportunities for novices. They are aiming to run a follow-up study on the benefit of training once the pandemic is downgraded.

Clinical education

Like many teaching hospitals in the country, the Imperial College NHS Trust team undertakes vital training roles to future undergraduate and postgraduate doctors. Virtual training rounds have now started to be implemented with positive initial feedback.

For Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust:

“Our aim is to explore new technologies to improve medical education. We have partnered with the Microsoft lead ResilientXR consortium alongside Health Education England to build COVID-19 content. In addition, we see a significant opportunity to train the next generation of medical students and have developed a core team of trainees and fourth year medical students to explore mixed reality use cases across the hospital including applications in oncology, intensive care, surgery, and also engage with colleagues in the community”

Andrew Lewington, Associate Medical Director of Education, Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust

What were keys to successful implementation?

James Kinross and Rafael Guerrero both shared that in the beginning, there was a fair degree of anxiety. To actually try to deploy new technology in the middle of a storm is hard to do. There’s less resources and less in-person IT support. You’re asking your frontline care workers to do technically difficult things while they’re cognitively over-burdened and stressed and sometimes can’t conceptualise what new technologies can do.

To this end, there are key tips that are worth calling out:

• It’s critical that when the doctor or nurse puts on the HoloLens and makes their first call, it’s ready to go, including compliance, security, and manageability.
• One of the first things that the NHS teams did, were to ensure that HoloLens could work effectively with various different types of PPE – including full face masks. They were able to do this pretty easily with some low-tech solutions. Imperial are planning for longer-term solutions with 3D printed additions.
• Cleaning of HoloLens was also very straightforward within the NHS as they have many protocols for how equipment and devices get cleaned. The NHS found that through collaborating within the consortium, they were also able to leverage best practices very quickly.
• And finally, from a data governance perspective, it was important that patient privacy was adhered to. This included ensuring that clinicians wearing the HoloLens are always identifying what HoloLens is, why they are wearing it, and what the other healthcare workers on the end of the Teams call can see and hear. There were also decisions about what data they would and would not record, in adherence with internal data governance policies.

Identifying and supporting end-user adoption

In the case of Morecambe Bay, CCIO Colin Brown spent a fair bit of time in the first few weeks engaging across the physical NHS Trust locations to meet with Respiratory Consultants, Specialist Registrars, Clinical Nurse Specialists, and Ward Nurse Managers to secure their interest, engagement, and adoption.

At Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Rafael Guerrero showcased his examples starting from the Heart Centre, with quality improvement survey results to the hospital executive boards. He then subsequently expanded to meetings with heads of departments and education partners from the local universities.

From the Imperial perspective, they also met with many different physicians across Imperial. They showcased the technology to see if there was an immediate use case. If not, they didn’t try to force it. However, what they found is that as teams have more bandwidth or have experienced HoloLens on the Teams-side of the call, they are seeing significantly more requests by others to adopt this technology for remote collaboration.

Getting the foundational use case right

By starting with remote assist, HoloLens is being seen as a functional tool to support remote collaboration and it is adopted on this basis. However, it only taps into a limited amount of the HoloLens functionality. Clinicians are asking for more capability, such as integrating Electronic Health Records. These requests are being easily solved without significant development resources.

Find out more

How HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist helps the NHS provide patient care

Measuring patient and clinical effectiveness

What’s next: How can other NHS Trusts get involved?

What technology was needed to get started

About the author

Leila has been working on the commercial mixed reality business for the last five years and is based in the UK. She’s been working with some of the most advanced customers and partners in the world, helping them identify, pilot and deploy technologies that have a profound ability to transform their business.

Prior to joining the mixed reality team, she held several senior positions at Microsoft including leading consumer and commercial business units such as Server & Tools and Windows in the UK and Central & Eastern Europe

The post Defining and implementing HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist use cases appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Partnering with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has been particularly helpful for us to establish patient and clinical effectiveness for the HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. It is a Top 10 global university committed to research excellence and operates five hospitals in London with 11,000 staff.

In addition to helping to define the use cases, the team has helped to establish measurement approaches. These approaches have been used to support as we started to engage other NHS Trusts.

It’s important to recognise that this still at the beginning and early days but an important step forward.

Initial use case focus for measuring effectiveness

The previous blog looked at defining and implementing Dynamics 365 Remote Assist use cases. Therefore, I’m keen to reiterate the specific use cases that Imperial initially focussed on:

1. Remote ward rounds to reduce COVID-19 exposure and PPE use: Rather than having multiple doctors and nurses pushing a computer around as they make decisions about patients, the Imperial team could send one physician wearing HoloLens. This means they can reduce the amount of doctors and nurses needed for single rounds whilst reducing the amount of PPE used.
2. Reduce contact: The doctor wearing the HoloLens no longer needed to touch a computer. This lessens the risk of unwittingly transmitting the virus and reduces the amount of extra cleaning or computer-specific protection equipment.
3. Increase access to patient information: With HoloLens you can remotely talk to team members or doctors, at the patient’s bedside without them physically being in the same room. You can see and interact with any of that patient information virtually so you don’t need to touch anything. You can even interact and manipulate those images in a heads-up view next to the patient.

Study methodology

To measure patient and clinical effectiveness, the Imperial team collected data pertaining to the key outcomes of patient’s safety, time exposed to COVID-19 positive environments, and PPE use. They have also collected qualitative data from staff related to how easy the technology is to use, and the perceived impact on care quality, communication and teamwork.

The Imperial team has recently submitted their research for peer-review. Here are their preliminary findings:

• The HoloLens 2 reduces staff numbers per ward round by around 66 percent to 83 percent (depending on the environment).
• This equates to saving of 50.4 – 55.4 hrs of ward staff time per week.
• Savings in PPE ranged from 106 to 420 sets per ward per week.
• Staff felt the HoloLens 2 significantly improved communication for the sickest patients.

There is also significant opportunities to measure process improvements. This includes operational efficiencies. In some cases, Imperial are seeing a 30 percent reduction in the time that it takes to do ward rounds. This saves on travel time and many other factors that are important to measure.

What do the staff think?

Dr Louis Koizia, consultant physician and geriatrician at Imperial, has been one of the doctors using the HoloLens 2 daily since March. At the beginning of March, he did not think the HoloLens 2 would become an everyday tool. However, within four weeks of using HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, he saw the significant improvements it was making. One of his biggest concerns was around whether it would be easy and comfortable to enable daily use.

“If you can ask me now, I can’t imagine going back to my old style ward rounds and we are only two months into it,” Dr Koizia said. “We are only using the technology at such a basic level with HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist as we needed it to work ‘out of the box’ and we needed it to do a job. It’s done that fantastically. I’m excited about what we are going to develop out and I’m certain that in a year or two’s time these will be used mainstream throughout the country.”

Improving patient care

It’s also important to take into account the input from patients and feedback has been quite positive.

Dr Koizia said patients are very used to seeing healthcare staff with PPE, gloves, masks and visors. So wearing the HoloLens 2 has been quite a natural addition. Explaining to patients why they are using the HoloLens 2, what the physician sees, but also what the team of healthcare professionals can see virtually is a very important part of the process. This has resulted in positive feedback from patients. They have a team of healthcare professionals working with them, while also ensuring that they themselves aren’t exposing staff.

Within Alder Hey, the team has been sensitive to ensure they get feedback from both the children and parents. Their findings have been that the children did not find the HoloLens 2 scary, and the parents were welcoming to the prompt adoption of technology. The doctors and nurses felt that patient care was more focussed as they were not distracted by other ward activities and traffic. Also, it has the advantage of relevant investigations instantaneously being shared between the teams.

“It just seems quite a good thing that you can have all those amount of people in the same room, in one person, when this contagious thing, that no-one knows the beginnings or the ends of it. They’re not only saving me, I’m not passing anything onto any one of them and their friends,” John, a patient at Imperial told BBC at 6.

Another patient was asked by The Economist whether it felt like it was technology that was diagnosing them or a person. “Always felt like a person, a whole group of doctors standing there in front of me, while there was only one person and they had more input because they had all of the data in front of them with the computer screens.”

What’s next

Next, they will publish the peer reviewed research on the patient and clinical effectiveness of the HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. We also know that there is a lot more to do in this area. In the next blog, we’ll talk about how the team is thinking about what’s next and how can other NHS Trusts get involved.

Find out more

How HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist helps the NHS provide patient care

Defining and implementing Dynamics 365 Remote Assist use cases

What’s next: How can other NHS Trusts get involved?

What technology was needed to get started

About the author

Leila has been working on the commercial mixed reality business for the last five years and is based in the UK. She’s been working with some of the most advanced customers and partners in the world, helping them identify, pilot and deploy technologies that have a profound ability to transform their business.

Prior to joining the mixed reality team, she held several senior positions at Microsoft including leading consumer and commercial business units such as Server & Tools and Windows in the UK and Central & Eastern Europe.

The post Measuring patient and clinical effectiveness appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We have seen significant experimentation with HoloLens 2 in health since we launched it back in 2015. Much of that work has been around doctors piloting within the advanced visualisation, pre-operative surgical planning, multidisciplinary team scenarios, patient education, and medical training to name a few.

Since 2015’s launch of HoloLens 1, the feedback from our Development Kit has been used to inform the development priorities of HoloLens 2. We designed HoloLens 2 to be more immersive, comfortable, and to help companies get started with out of the box applications for quicker time to market.

With the launch of HoloLens 2, we now have significant out of the box applications that include Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Mixed Reality Partner applications. We have great examples for What HoloLens 2 Can Do today across industries, and how we can use these to transform health tech.

Continuing to prioritise remote assist scenarios across the NHS

My favourite starting point for the NHS Trusts is within remote assist scenarios. Previously, we talked about how remote assist started as a tool to help protect Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust staff while delivering on patient care during COVID-19. It started in a few wards such as respiratory and has now been extended into renal and trauma wards. It’s also being used for undergraduate and graduate training scenarios across many Trusts.

The technology was applied in both adult and paediatric settings. It’s been used in open areas such as clinics/ward and confined areas such as operating theatres. Across many Trusts, it’s assisted during delivery-intense clinical service such as surgery, to teaching for undergraduate and graduate training scenarios.

We also are seeing the potential applications and pilots are in process right now for distributed geographic care and primary care scenarios.

There is a great opportunity to connect HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to Electronic Health Records. By doing so, we can leverage tools such as Power Platform, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service. This means we can ensure we provide the right information at the right place and time, with the right data governance structures.

Expanding use cases with mixed reality partners

There’s more to HoloLens 2 than remote assist. We also have significant interest from NHS Trusts to work with partners. Here are some examples we are seeing from our innovative partners:

Case Western Reserve University has built a HoloAnatomy curriculum. In a Medical Science Educator journal study, students using HoloAnatomy required 40 percent less classroom time to cover the required learning than those doing dissection. This year, they sent 185 HoloLens to their first year medical students so they could keep studying. We’re seeing others, including Oxford University, looking to bring this to the UK.

ApoQlar has been building a Virtual Surgery Intelligence platform that is being used by various hospitals around the world – from Marien Krankehaus to the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust. Offerings include Surgery, Surgery Planning, Telemedicine, Documentation, Patient Education, and Teaching applications. The platform uses AI to segment and present MRI and CT scans in 3D.

Medivis has been building out a SurgicalAR and AnatomyX platform for healthcare. SurgicalAR is building the future of computer-assisted surgery by harnessing HoloLens and AI. It aims to improve surgical outcomes for patients and drive cost savings for medical institutions.

Philips is building Azurion, an image-guided therapy platform for minimally invasive surgery. It brings live imaging and other sources of data into a 3D holographic augmented reality environment. This can be ergonomically, easily, and intuitively controlled by the physician.

GigXR HoloPatient is a suite of standardised holographic simulations for safe and practical instructor-led development of clinical skills. Trainees can see, hear, and assess holographic patients with new pathologies that exhibit varied symptoms. They can easily see presentations of different illnesses or injuries.

ResilientXR is a partnership between digital creative industry, academia, and government. Made up of Microsoft, Dimension, Digital Catapult, VISR-VR, Fracture Reality, Make Real, University of Leeds’ Centre for Immersive Technologies, and University College London. The ResilientXR consortium identified immediate training needs for clinical staff during COVID-19. Within a few weeks, they developed and deployed to HEE interventions to meet these needs. This includes 2D videos, volumetric holographic videos, resources, and an immersive platform for management and global distribution of the XR content across devices.

In addition, we are working to onboard new partners such as Medical iSight, into our Mixed Reality Partner Program. The team at Medical iSight has had extensive experience with HoloLens since 2018. This has been invaluable to the current speed of deployment with existing use cases. Going forward, Medical iSight is developing a comprehensive platform for surgical planning, image-guided intervention, healthcare education, and remote clinical collaboration. In particular, it has a bespoke module for interventional neuroradiology, where live 2D imaging is spatially registered to pre-operatively acquired 3D scans, used during mechanical thrombectomy for the treatment of strokes.

Building the evidence base to measure effectiveness

As a collective, we have an opportunity to drive a structured approach for wider trials to continue to demonstrate impact in a transparent and robust way, both for the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist use case and for new use cases. We can share learnings and insights, including how we scale this out on a national and global basis.

Working with the NHS Trusts as a collaborative community

Insight are one of our key mixed reality partners, and also an authorised reseller of HoloLens 2. They can help advise on solutions and also has a practice to do custom development.

Insight has packaged the best practices and created a free Dynamics 365 Remote Assist Fast Start for NHS organisations who purchase HoloLens 2 through Insight.

Once you get set-up through this process, we will look forward to integrating you into the NHS Teams collaboration site that we have, for community Q&A and in sharing best practices.

Three years of innovation in three months, but let’s keep going

As I reflect on the past three months (which feels like a lifetime ago now!), I am deeply impressed with the work being done. With the NHS Trusts, I believe we have done something very profound in proving that we can get HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist deployed. The evidence proves that this technology can help protect NHS staff lives, while delivering new models of remote patient care.

We are still in the early days of tapping into the vast potential of HoloLens. However, we are already seeing more use cases being adopted by more NHS Trusts, social care, and medical schools.

With leadership from our leading clinicians within the NHS, our opportunity will be to continue to work as a collective with our partners like Insight, Medical iSight, and our mixed reality partners and deliver the full potential of this transformative technology.

Find out more

How HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist helps the NHS provide patient care

Defining and implementing Dynamics 365 Remote Assist use cases

Measuring patient and clinical effectiveness

What technology is needed to get started

About the author

Leila has been working on the commercial mixed reality business for the last five years and is based in the UK. She’s been working with some of the most advanced customers and partners in the world, helping them identify, pilot and deploy technologies that have a profound ability to transform their business.

Prior to joining the mixed reality team, she held several senior positions at Microsoft including leading consumer and commercial business units such as Server & Tools and Windows in the UK and Central & Eastern Europe.

The post What’s next: How can other NHS Trusts get involved? appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In March, we rolled out Microsoft Teams for free to assist throughout COVID-19. Recently, the NHS announced it chooses Microsoft 365 to create a truly joined-up service. Both of these mean that innovations such as Microsoft HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist are far easier to adopt and use. A core requirement for Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is Microsoft Teams. Therefore, having the licenses and end-user adoption has allowed NHS Trusts to start deploying in days with limited friction. Often those familiar with HoloLens will say to others, “It’s heads-up Teams” and there is an immediacy of understanding.

Built-in security

To deploy new technology during challenging conditions, it was critical that its security met the needs of the NHS. Being natively integrated with Microsoft security technologies (like Azure Active Directory), the HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist can provide a security solution for connectivity. Leveraging Microsoft Intune to provide remote Mobile Device Management to easily configure and manage the devices. Azure Active Directory Conditional Access helps secure user access to the service. These allowed the NHS to meet their security needs whilst providing an excellent end user experience.

Conditional Access meant that the staff using the device could pick up a headset and have the minimum number of username/password prompts to quickly get working, whilst keeping the account secure with Multi-Factor Authentication against unwanted authentication attempts. Additionally, Microsoft Intune provided the ability to restrict the applications on the device to only a permitted list (Multi-app Kiosk Mode) to both minimise training time, and increase device security. Connectivity to the internet was achieved by using existing Wi-Fi networks with Microsoft Intune deploying security PSK or certificate based Wi-Fi profiles to the devices as appropriate for the secured networks available in the use locations.

It’s all about the data…

With any system collecting video or audio data, strict data governance requirements come into play to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality. Since the NHS had already adopted Microsoft Teams, this was simple to achieve. All the video and audio data collected through Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is subject to the same regulatory processing and storage requirements as Microsoft Teams. This means that the solution can be approved with the data protection teams confidently. They know that the data would be protected and meet the requirements already approved and in place.

Licences Required:

To implement the above design one of the following sets of licences is required:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist
• and ONE of the following
  1. Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3
     • OR
  2. Microsoft Enterprise Mobility and Security (EM+S) E3
     • OR
  3. Azure Active Directory Premium P1 AND Microsoft Intune AND a suitable Microsoft Teams licence (for example Office 365 E3)

Best practice tips

Colin Brown, CCIO at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has shared that to support the purchasing of the HoloLens 2, a key enabler was digital leader discussions. Because they already have a full Microsoft tech stack, the IT department commitment was straightforward. They had early expert engagement with their Infection Prevention Team so were able to develop a standard operating protocol. This was to ensure the headset could be protected and cleaned in a virus-laden clinical environment.

Some additional great tips:

• Ensure a good deployment of Office 365 and Microsoft Teams.
• Ensure good co-design of use cases in acute provider, community, wider health and care systems, and between clinical leaders and IT.
• Develop conversations with consultant enthusiasts and digital leaders.
• Spend the time to get the first couple of end-users up and running on their first Dynamics 365 Remote Assist call. Once they have done a couple, they’ll start using it consistently.

How do you acquire HoloLens?

We have partnered with Insight who are one of our key mixed reality partners and an authorised reseller of the HoloLens 2. They can also advise on solutions, provide deployment, and managed services alongside custom development for apps on the HoloLens 2.

Insight’s Dynamics 365 Remote Assist Fast Start offering for the NHS

Insight has packaged the best practices and created a free Remote Assist Fast Start for NHS organisations who purchase HoloLens 2 through Insight.

This is designed for organisations considering Dynamics 365 Remote Assist with HoloLens 2, with mobile devices, or have HoloLens but haven’t started to actively deploy. The goal is to help get you going with minimum fuss. They’ll be using the best practices that we have garnered to get you up and running quickly.

This includes an introduction to HoloLens 2, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist overview, typical use cases in healthcare, technical considerations, and licenses. In addition, they will work to understand where you are at in your Teams deployment, walking you through steps for implementation.

Most importantly, they will take you through the HoloLens 2 out of the box experience, through to your first Dynamics 365 Remote Assist call.

Once you get set-up through this process, we will look forward to integrating you into the NHS Teams collaboration site that we have, for community Q&A and in sharing best practices.

Find out more

How HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist helps the NHS provide patient care

Defining and implementing Dynamics 365 Remote Assist use cases

Measuring patient and clinical effectiveness

What’s next: How can other NHS Trusts get involved?

About the author

Leila has been working on the commercial mixed reality business for the last five years and is based in the UK. She’s been working with some of the most advanced customers and partners in the world, helping them identify, pilot and deploy technologies that have a profound ability to transform their business.

Prior to joining the mixed reality team, she held several senior positions at Microsoft including leading consumer and commercial business units such as Server & Tools and Windows in the UK and Central & Eastern Europe.

The post HoloLens and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist: What technology is needed to get started? appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Today, whilst information is everywhere, it’s often not in the hands of first-line workers when and where they need it. I’m talking about people who are working in front of customers and with products day to day.

Mixed reality allows us to blend the digital and the physical worlds, infusing the environment around them with relevant information, and empowering you to achieve more.

How do businesses use mixed reality?

Organisations across just about every industry have found valuable commercial applications for mixed reality. The applications with the clearest ROI can be grouped into a few areas:

• Remote assistance
• Training and task guidance
• Spatial planning and analytics
• Collaborative visualisation

Microsoft has responded to the clear customer demand for turnkey solutions in these areas with a range of mixed reality products under the Dynamics 365 brand.

For instance, one global energy provider uses Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to connect technicians with remote experts across the world. Together, they can troubleshoot problems in real-time to keep their operations online and incident-free.

Or take the example of an American truck manufacturer that improves its employee on-boarding and assembly line processes using Dynamics 365 Guides. First-line workers that used the technology were vocal about how mixed reality-based Guides made them feel confident and empowered to be effective in their job from day one.

Mixed reality also enables sales professionals at organisations to deliver a better customer experience, thanks to Product Visualise. It also allows far more efficient planning of spaces through Dynamics 365 Layout.

What these scenarios all have in common, is the need to bring digital information into the physical context of employees’ work.

How can mixed reality help your employees?

A good employee experience is essential for any successful business. Engaged and empowered employees are more productive, perform better, and stay with businesses longer. A core part of this is giving them the skills they need to reach their full potential.

Take the manufacturing industry, where there’s a huge gap between the number of available skilled workers and the number of jobs in many countries. In the US, 25% of workers will be eligible for retirement in the next two years. So, whilst 3.5 million jobs will be created over the next decade, only half of those jobs will get filled due to a shortage of skills.

This provides the ideal opportunity to harness mixed reality, combined with Dynamics 365 Guides, to empower your employees with the tools, expertise, and skills they need to be professionally successful.

Just imagine a set of guided instructions following you around as you perform your new job, enabling you to learn as you go, with both hands free, without distracting your new colleagues. With mixed reality, it’s possible to digitally overlay information over real-world objects, making it even easier for your team to understand a complex procedure and get it right first and every time. This shift from static 2D images, documents and classroom training into interactive, on-the-job learning means that knowledge is applied immediately and is retained.

Not only is the training and activity more effective, but you also generate valuable data that can be used to improve that training experience for the rest of your team.

How else will it transform my business?

During this year’s Future Decoded event, I had the opportunity to discuss mixed reality with Microsoft partner DXC. The firm explained how important it was to understand the current way of working and training.

This is a world of classroom-based learning, PDF instructions, and paper manuals. And it’s necessary for companies like DXC to help businesses translate these traditional methods into mixed reality – an engaging combination of text, video, images, animations, and 3D assets.

Dynamics 365 Guides must also be intuitive and user-friendly, in order to engage your employees. Holograms must be carefully selected and placed. Custom media is also sometimes necessary.

How do you follow-up your first successful project?

At the start of the journey, you’ll want to start small. A proof of concept focused on one specific use case, such as remote assistance, or a training scenario, for example. This lets you gain familiarity with the technology, how to use it, how to maximise its value. With your eye undoubtedly on the business impact, this is the ideal moment to establish the ROI.

Once this project has proved successful, you can begin to move on to broader mixed reality projects. This is when you can begin expanding the scope by adding additional use cases or scenarios. If you’re feeling bold, you may even incorporate other technologies like IoT and analytics.

With a full production rollout, it’s time to consider security and device management, too. But once you’re up and running, you can focus on the really exciting part: how to integrate the technology across your organisation.

Find out more

Watch the session from Future Decoded: Re-imagining field service operations with connected products, mixed reality and AI

Transform your field service with IoT, AI and mixed reality

About the author

Matt is currently a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft aligned to Dynamics 365, focusing on Customer Engagement. He is fascinated by the way tech can improve marketing, sales and customer service, as well as how tech providers market and sell these solutions. Prior to his experience at Microsoft he worked at a number of tech businesses, including one of the top analyst firms Gartner, honing his client development and relationship management skills. He is currently completing an MBA at Imperial College.

The post What is mixed reality and is it right for your business? appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

But, now, we are entering the third wave of computing. From construction sites to factory floors, from operating rooms to classrooms; mixed reality, AI, the intelligent edge and intelligent cloud are changing how we work, learn, communicate and get things done.

We are at the dawn of a new age of computing. One in which the digital world goes beyond two-dimensional screens and enters our three-dimensional world, empowering people to achieve more, in ways we could only have imagined until now. And it all started with mixed reality, such as the HoloLens 2. When you can have native 3D, have data in context at your fingertips, and be heads-up and hands-free in your projects, you can get massive gains.

And it all started with mixed reality, such as the Microsoft HoloLens back in 2016 which was the world’s first untethered holographic computer that you could wear. Since 2016, we have had 87 percent of enterprises evaluating, piloting, and beginning to deploy. The findings are that when you can have native 3D, have data in context at your fingertips, and be heads-up and hands-free in your projects – you can get massive gains.

But with the announcement of HoloLens 2, we continue to set the high watermark for mixed reality and AI in the edge of computing.  And over the last 3 years, we’ve been hearing consistent feedback from you. You want greater immersion, greater comfort, and quicker time to value. With HoloLens 2, this is exactly what we’ve been focusing on.

Here are four reasons why your business needs a mixed reality strategy:

1. Empowering and protecting frontline workers

One of the most fundamental learnings that we’ve had with our customers over the last three years, is that this type of technology is empowering the frontline workers, who have often not had the same technology benefits as what the knowledge workers have benefitted from. Yet these workers are critical for organisations as they are the ones who are the closest to products and customers.

HoloLens is keeping essential healthcare workers safe, while significantly improving communications to help patients. Staff at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust are wearing the mixed-reality headset as they work on the frontline in the most high-risk area of some of London’s busiest hospitals. Using Remote Assist, doctors wearing HoloLens can hold hands-free Teams video calls with colleagues and experts anywhere in the world. They can receive advice, interacting with the caller and the patient at the same time, while medical notes and X-rays can also be placed alongside the call in the wearer’s field of view.

In construction, productivity in frontline workers has only grown 1 percent over the last two decades, which, when compared to knowledge workers who have benefitted greatly from technology is not a lot. Mixed reality lets these frontline workers access data and information on site, hands free, as they are working. This means they work quicker, make less mistakes, and stay connected to others.

In fact, according to the 2017 Forrester Consulting report, ‘Mixed Reality Unlocks New Ways for Organizations to Collaborate, Innovate, and Learn’ using mixed reality can boost productivity by 25 percent, while reducing errors to almost zero.

2. Improved training

We forget about 80 percent of what we learn after 30 days. This means we have to think about how we upskill and retrain our employees. By using mixed reality, you can provide hands-on visual learning at the touch of a button. Dynamics 365 Guides brings training to life with interactive content, photos, videos and 3D models bringing training. You can even use data to improve these experiences.

Plus, HoloLens can bring up manuals and guides while employees are working, offering a richer learning experience whenever they need it. It also provides training for situations that are hard to replicate in real-life, without real-life consequences such as machine breakdowns, construction issues, and even surgery.

CBRE is the world’s largest integrated real estate and facilities management company, serving major clients all around the globe. During a number of pilot projects on client sites, CBRE has seen the benefits of using mixed reality in remote collaboration for assisting their engineers and technicians to improve efficiency, collaboration and customer experiences. They also plan on using the HoloLens for training to create a more immersive learning experience, reduce travel costs and get employees up to speed faster, ensuring greater engineer confidence and better break-to-fix times for clients’ equipment and technical infrastructure to ensure maximum facility and asset uptime.

3. Remote servicing and collaboration

For some industries, technicians often travel all over to provide servicing, auditing, and maintenance on equipment. This can get costly and be time-consuming.

This is where a HoloLens with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist comes in. Your experts get a real-time view of a problem to troubleshoot efficiently. Not only does it reduce costs, but frontline workers will get training on how to solve the problem if it occurs again in the future. This type of instant collaboration is great way to solve problems quicker, while learning on the job.

At CBRE, an automation specialist on a life sciences account was asked to visit another of client’s site to carry out a repair and complete an application upgrade on some equipment. Unable to leave their current site, they were able to leverage the use of mixed reality to provide assistance.

“By using the HoloLens and the Remote Assist app, I was able to talk the engineers through the procedure whilst being able to see what they were doing,” they said. “This saved me valuable time and also provided training to the other engineers who carried out the work. It also saved possible call-out charges from the third-party vendor.”

4. Efficiency and quality gains

The best part of the HoloLens 2 is that it’s easy to use and comfortable, which means that your employees are more likely to reach out for it when they need to. It even fits over glasses. It adapts easily to the individual’s hand gestures, tracks eyes in real time, and is secure with Windows Hello. And with a range of apps already on the market, you can get up and running quicker than ever.

A 2018 Harvard Business Review report ‘A New Dimension of Work’ found that mixed reality improved field service and maintenance by four times. 80 percent of companies also reported it improved collaboration. Employees will be more engaged, productive, and knowledgeable.

Employee engagement has not just retaining benefits, but you’ll open yourself up to a wider talent pool. You’ll attract new labour and younger employees, while ensuring they can get to work quicker because they’re given the tools that they need to more easily learn.

From hospital wards to classrooms, construction sites to factory floors, mixed reality, AI, the intelligent edge and intelligent cloud are changing the way we work, learn, communicate, and get things done.

Mixed reality brings to life everything we need to contextualise work. This makes for fewer errors, faster and more productive employees, better training, improved employee safety and amazing collaboration abilities.

Find out more

Read the blog – What is mixed reality and is it right for your business?

Download the eBook – Mixed reality: Why nine out of ten businesses plan to use it

Explore the product – HoloLens 2 

About the author

Leila has been working on the commercial mixed reality business for the last four years and is based in the UK. She’s been working with some of the most advanced customers and partners in the world, helping them identify, pilot and deploy technologies that have a profound ability to transform their business.

Prior to joining the mixed reality team, she held several senior positions at Microsoft including leading consumer and commercial business units such as Server & Tools and Windows in the UK and Central & Eastern Europe

The post 4 reasons why every business needs a mixed reality strategy appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We’re in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution and the pace of change is faster than it’s ever been – years are now flying by and you don’t want to get lost in the past. That’s right, we’re looking at the technology trends that have the potential to empower your employees, engage your customers, and transform the world in 2019. Instead of focussing on new year, new you; try new year, new us. 

Here we take a look at the top technology trends for 2019, and how you can leverage them to improve your business. 

1. Real-time AI at the blink of an eye 

Ok, before you finish your eye roll – we know AI has appeared in these lists for a few years already and for very good reason. This year, it’s only going to get more popular, bigger, and faster. 

2019 will be the year where we see organisations shifting from just thinking about AI to being proudly AI-first. It will stretch right to the edge – a continuously expanding set of data-gathering connected systems and devices. It will give real time insights and experiences which means your organisation will be faster, more responsive and more creative. 

Real-time AI is becoming more and more important as cloud infrastructures process live data streams such as search queries, videos, or interactions with users. 

Project Brainwave is a future-proof deep learning platform that provides real-time AI, fast. Deep neural networks use large multi-layered models which are deployed in the world’s largest configurable cloud. It has up to 39.5 teraflops of effective performance. Which means it’s fast. Very fast. 

How can you use real-time AI?  

When using image classification, for example, Project Brainwave can process an image in under 2 milliseconds. That means you’ll be able to detect spills in your retail stores immediately, inspect critical equipment, or track items across supply chains. Or perhaps you can give your healthcare practitioners more time with their patients by using it to conduct real-time medical image analysis.  

Soon there will be models for text, audio, speech, and natural language and you’ll be able to accelerate your own custom models.  

Not only is your real-time AI high speed and low cost, but by using programmable hardware, it means it’s completely future-proof and able to adapt to whatever we’ll encounter in 2020’s top tech trends. 

2. Mixing business with mixed reality  

Mixed reality is not just for gaming. It’s slowly found a niche in businesses and is changing how we interact with technology. 

It brings the best of the digital and physical worlds together, providing context-relevant information as it’s needed.  

What we’ll see in 2019 is not only an increasing use of this in business, but drawing in real-time AI and the use of digital twins.  

A digital twin is exactly what it sounds like – a virtual copy of a physical space, such as a building, factory, city, or even a tube system. Using real-time AI to gather data from the real space such as its devices, systems and the way it’s being used, it creates a digital twin. 

For example, a digital twin of a factory identifies a piece of machinery may need repairing soon. Using the digital twin, an engineer can open the virtual version and troubleshoot the problem. This can then be loaded into the system and a frontline worker can be guided to fix the machine onsite using the HoloLens to see the virtual model next to the real one. 

With your digital twin you’ll be able to detect problems, track patterns, gain new insights, and fix issues before they arise in the real world, making your business more productive.  

3. Smarter than Deep Thought 

Quantum computing is basically touted as the Superman of computing. It will be able to solve huge problems that classical computing couldn’t, quickly. And because it can do that, it could change the world.  

Normal computers use bits – or ones and zeros – and processes them one string at a time. Quantum computing stores information in qubits which can be both ones and zeros at the same time. By existing in both states, quantum computers can process all strings at the same time.  

This is revolutionary because we’ll be able to develop new materials, improve medicines, accelerate AI, bridge new frontiers in cryptography, and find the answer to life, the universe, and everything in it (and even tell you the question, too). 

Microsoft is working on a scalable solution with a robust qubit called the topological qubit. These have higher accuracy, are more stable, and low cost.  

For organisations, that means you may soon be using quantum computers to answer your business problems, improve infrastructure, reduce costs, and help provide fast insights into data. 

For the world, quantum computers could solve world hunger, help us reduce carbon emissions, and understand and change the very building blocks of the universe. And if that isn’t going to completely change and empower us all, I don’t know what will. Who knows, it might even encourage you to stick with the gym. 

Watch the video: Future technology trends explained

Hear from Microsoft UK’s Chief Technology Officer, Michael Wignall, around some of the top technology trends that will transform the future of work to understand what they could mean for your business.

Find out more  

Explore how you can maximise AI’s potential 

Read more about Microsoft’s quantum computing journey 

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