Your hologram doctor will see you now

A Texas hospital is experimenting with hologram technology to allow doctors to see their patients. Some health care experts question whether it's beneficial.

A patient walks into a hospital room, sits down, and begins talking to a doctor. Only in this case the doctor is a hologram.

It may sound like science fiction, but it's reality for some patients at the regional hospital Crescent in Lancaster, Texas.

In May, the hospital group began offering patients the ability to consult their doctor remotely in hologram form through a partnership with Holoconnects, a healthcare company. digital technology based in the Netherlands. Each Holobox – the company's name for its 440-pound, 7-foot-tall device that displays a video on a screen highly realistic 3D live view of a person – costs $42,000, with an additional annual service fee of $1,900.

The high-quality image gives the patient the feeling that a doctor is sitting inside the box, when in reality the doctor is miles away and looking at the cameras and screens showing the patient.

The system allows the patient and doctor to have a real-time telehealth visit that is more like a live visit. in-person conversation. Currently, the service is primarily used for pre- and post-operative visits.

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