Augmented Reality System for Single and Multi-party Review of Electronic Medical Records

The recent development in Augmented Reality (AR) technology has been applied in many fields such as entertainment, the military (eg combat training and navigation), architecture, and medical surgery. This paper describes the development of the Augmented Reality Medical Review (ARMR) system, which explores the use of AR technology that enables health care workers to review Electronic Medical Records (EMR) of patients in an AR environment. This novel approach enables users to move away from traditional desktop environments, allowing users to have access to computer-generated information out in the real world where they perform their usual tasks. This project uses a software library from the University of Washington (UW), called the ARToolKit that enables the system to superimpose virtual objects on top of target patterns. The paper will discuss how the ARMR system can be used in the following scenarios: individual user, colocated group and distributed group review of electronic medical records, and nametag recognition based on the technology from UW. Users are able to query and access EMR data from a database, and interact with the virtual objects without user input, through traditional devices such as keyboard and mouse.