Is Mixed Reality on the Horizon for Healthcare?

Mixed Reality (MR) also known as “hybrid reality” and “extended reality,” has the potential to change just about every industry, healthcare being no exception. A combination of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI); MR is emerging as a tech to create experiences that blend the real-life environment with digital elements.

It is lauded as being revolutionary because of its ability to provide a more personalized and immersive experience and recent advancements are paving way for previously unimagined possibilities in medicine, not only by lowering training and operational costs but also by improving surgical safety and precision.

According to a report by Research and Markets, the mixed reality market was valued at USD 376.1 million in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 3,915.6 million by 2026 with an expected CAGR of 41.8% over the forecast period 2021 to 2026.

With the rapid adoption of Mixed Reality in the coming years, the technology could find a variety of uses in the healthcare sector, including reducing the use of cadavers in medical student training, patient engagement therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and pre-operative visualisation of brain tumours by reviewing scans in-person using AR.

How ‘Mixed Reality’ is reshaping complex health procedures?

Mixed Reality offers infinite possibilities in medical diagnosis, training, surgeries, medical treatments, and rehabilitation, making it extremely detailed and accurate.

Instant diagnoses

MR headsets can record patient history discussed verbally by medical professionals which can be accessed by anyone including the nursing staff. Furthermore, these headsets can even analyze data and provide reports to doctors in real-time, eliminating the need to manually go through physical reports, making diagnosis faster and more accurate.

Medical training

Mixed Reality in recent years has seen more popularity in academics where it acts as an aid for teachers to teach various subjects and techniques. Students too can hone their skills before performing surgeries on patients. Doctors can also use MR to rehearse complicated surgeries, saving valuable time during their procedure while increasing their success rate.

Enhanced surgery

MR develops personalized 3D models for each patient and visualizes the interior anatomy in a completely immersive environment, thereby helping in pre-operative simulations. The MR wearable devices in combination with new emerging imaging technologies can aid greatly in complex surgical procedures such as reconstructive surgeries where holographic overlays helped surgeons to better view the bones and identify the course of blood vessels.

Recent applications of Mixed Reality in healthcare

Renowned medical universities are researching and using mixed reality in different areas of medicine, and the results appear to be promising in cardiology, training, autism, surgery, and more.

Cardiology:

Apollo Hospitals, one of the largest hospital chains in India, launch a mixed reality programme- Apollo ProHealthDeepX that uses machine learning, digital signal processing, and mixed reality to provide a visual insight into the internals of the heart using 3D images and assess a patient’s risk factors for heart disease all using the MR headsets.

Medicine Training:

NUS Medicine (Singapore) created Project Polaris which aims to integrate MR into their learning experience and create a realistic clinical scenario and give students a visual presentation of actual clinical procedural skills like inserting a cannula, as well as inserting catheters in male and female urinary tracts with the help of 3D holograms projections.

Autism Treatment:

The autism glass project of the medical school of Stanford University uses Google Glass to assist autistic children in interpreting their emotions and automating facial expression recognition using AI. They also intend to improve its accuracy and allow users to interact with it without the use of glasses in the future.

Phantom Limb Pain Treatment:

Aalborg University in Denmark conducted a study to examine if virtual reality (VR) can help reduce the pain of phantom limbs by tricking the amputee’s brain into believing it still controls the missing limb. When a patient moves his arm, the virtual arm moves in lockstep with them, allowing the patient to control the amputated limb with his brain.

Why the hesitation to implement MR?

Mixed Reality can be used in a variety of situations in healthcare, from home care to acute care units. While MR technology is expected to save costs and increase patient outcomes and satisfaction, healthcare professionals are encountering several challenges as they prepare to implement it.

The lack of adequate skill among medical practitioners, high investment costs, technical glitches, establishing interoperability with existing systems, defining reimbursement schemes, creating a secure environment, and the fear of data loss are all likely to stifle market growth for the time being during the assessment period.

The Road Ahead

Despite these challenges, over the projected period, improvements in regulatory policies are expected to ease the adoption of this technology. Factors such as rapid advancements in sensor technology, increased user acceptance, growing applications of MR in medical treatment, and increased workload of healthcare workers are driving the adoption of mixed reality in the global healthcare market. The benefits of MR systems, such as better operational efficiency, improved service quality, and reduced human effort, are also expected to boost mixed reality’s rise in the healthcare sector.
Statista report estimated that in 2025, the global mixed reality market will increase to about 3.7 billion U.S. dollars and the healthcare sector will hold the majority. It won’t be a surprise to see hospitals and clinics doubling the use of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), or Mixed Reality (MR) technologies in their clinical activities. Soon, we can expect to see MR technology being used in every other doctor’s clinic.

Published on Nov 13, 2024

Let’s take a trip back in time—2008. Netflix was nothing like the media juggernaut it is today. Back then, they were a DVD-rental-by-mail service trying to go digital. But here’s the kicker: they hit a major pitfall. The internet was booming, and people were binge-watching shows like never before, but Netflix’s infrastructure couldn’t handle the load. Their single, massive system—what techies call a “monolith”—was creaking under pressure. Slow load times and buffering wheels plagued the experience, a nightmare for any platform or app development company trying to scale

That’s when Netflix decided to do something wild—they broke their monolith into smaller pieces. It was microservices, the tech equivalent of turning one giant pizza into bite-sized slices. Instead of one colossal system doing everything from streaming to recommendations, each piece of Netflix’s architecture became a specialist—one service handled streaming, another handled recommendations, another managed user data, and so on.

But microservices alone weren’t enough. What if one slice of pizza burns? Would the rest of the meal be ruined? Netflix wasn’t about to let a burnt crust take down the whole operation. That’s when they introduced the Circuit Breaker Pattern—just like a home electrical circuit that prevents a total blackout when one fuse blows. Their famous Hystrix tool allowed services to fail without taking down the entire platform.

Fast-forward to today: Netflix isn’t just serving you movie marathons, it’s a digital powerhouse, an icon in platform engineering; it’s deploying new code thousands of times per day without breaking a sweat. They handle 208 million subscribers streaming over 1 billion hours of content every week. Trends in Platform engineering transformed Netflix into an application dev platform with self-service capabilities, supporting app developers and fostering a culture of continuous deployment.

Did Netflix bring order to chaos?

Netflix didn’t just solve its own problem. They blazed the trail for a movement: platform engineering. Now, every company wants a piece of that action. What Netflix did was essentially build an internal platform that developers could innovate without dealing with infrastructure headaches, a dream scenario for any application developer or app development company seeking seamless workflows.

And it’s not just for the big players like Netflix anymore. Across industries, companies are using platform engineering to create Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs)—one-stop shops for mobile application developers to create, test, and deploy apps without waiting on traditional IT. According to Gartner, 80% of organizations will adopt platform engineering by 2025 because it makes everything faster and more efficient, a game-changer for any mobile app developer or development software firm.

All anybody has to do is to make sure the tools are actually connected and working together. To make the most of it. That’s where modern trends like self-service platforms and composable architectures come in. You build, you scale, you innovate.achieving what mobile app dev and web-based development needs And all without breaking a sweat.

Is Mantra Labs Redefining Platform Engineering?

We didn’t just learn from Netflix’s playbook; we’re writing our own chapters in platform engineering. One example of this? Our work with one of India’s leading private-sector general insurance companies.

Their existing DevOps system was like Netflix’s old monolith: complex, clunky, and slowing them down. Multiple teams, diverse workflows, and a lack of standardization were crippling their ability to innovate. Worse yet, they were stuck in a ticket-driven approach, which led to reactive fixes rather than proactive growth. Observability gaps meant they were often solving the wrong problems, without any real insight into what was happening under the hood.

That’s where Mantra Labs stepped in. Mantra Labs brought in the pillars of platform engineering:

Standardization: We unified their workflows, creating a single source of truth for teams across the board.

Customization: Our tailored platform engineering approach addressed the unique demands of their various application development teams.

Traceability: With better observability tools, they could now track their workflows, giving them real-time insights into system health and potential bottlenecks—an essential feature for web and app development and agile software development.

We didn’t just slap a band-aid on the problem; we overhauled their entire infrastructure. By centralizing infrastructure management and removing the ticket-driven chaos, we gave them a self-service platform—where teams could deploy new code without waiting in line. The results? Faster workflows, better adoption of tools, and an infrastructure ready for future growth.

But we didn’t stop there. We solved the critical observability gaps—providing real-time data that helped the insurance giant avoid potential pitfalls before they happened. With our approach, they no longer had to “hope” that things would go right. They could see it happening in real-time which is a major advantage in cross-platform mobile application development and cloud-based web hosting.

The Future of Platform Engineering: What’s Next?

As we look forward, platform engineering will continue to drive innovation, enabling companies to build scalable, resilient systems that adapt to future challenges—whether it’s AI-driven automation or self-healing platforms.

If you’re ready to make the leap into platform engineering, Mantra Labs is here to guide you. Whether you’re aiming for smoother workflows, enhanced observability, or scalable infrastructure, we’ve got the tools and expertise to get you there.

Is Mixed Reality on the Horizon for Healthcare?