UC Irvine Is The First Medical School To Add Google Glass To Its Curriculum

Google Glass is going to medical school. On Thursday, the University of California at Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine announced that it is integrating the already-iconic wearable into its four-year curriculum for medical students — the first medical school to do so.

Glass has seen its strongest professional reception in medicine, with a variety of pilot programs in hospitals, operating rooms, and other parts of medical life. “It’s way too early to tell” if Glass will become standard in medical schools, Dr. Jennifer Joe told us, “but a lot of people [in medical education] are interested.”

She heads up MedTech Boston, a non-profit organization that has been conducting projects and competitions involving medical uses of Glass. Joe noted a surprising fact: Medical schools in the U.S. are generally slow to adopt new technologies, and perhaps “only half require students to use a laptop or tablet.” But, she added, if Glass did get widely adopted — and was used for collecting data as well as video — “it would dramatically change medical education.” Imagine an attending physician seeing what you saw during a simulation, Joe said, and guiding you through the procedure using Glass...