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I'm a lucky guy. Henry Wei recently reached out to me out of nowhere to talk about my healthcare startup. Given Henry's bio this is an of itself was an exciting and noteworthy event, only exacerbated by the following email from Henry a few hours later: "Hey by the way would you be interested in joining my Google Glass experiment?... I’m a Google Glass explorer but hardly ever have time to tinker & play with my Glass.  I gathered a bunch of Cornell Med students interested in it, and wanted each of them to try it for a couple of weeks and write a blog post or two about their vision/ideas since typically med students are less cynical and more visionary = better ideas for the future... No one responded to my last call for volunteers so if you’d like I can hand it off to you before thanksgiving to try out." 

You can imagine how long it took me to decide.

So, I picked up the Glass (or simply "Glass" as the convention goes) last Friday evening from Henry's doorman. I found out when I first opened the box Saturday morning that either contact lenses or good eyesight are strictly required to use Glass, and I had neither. So on Sunday, I got myself some shiny new contact lenses, and I sat down tonight for a proper test drive.

It's worth pointing out: the fact that I don't typically wear contacts (although I wore them regularly many years ago) adds to the mystique of Glass. I actually have to place a device directly on my eyeball before I don Glass. 

The 30 minutes or so I've spent with Glass have left me feeling that I've undoubtedly experienced something from the future. It reminds me of the first time I signed on to Prodigy. On its face, there's nothing that Glass can do (take a photo, make a phone call, tweet, check the weather, etc.) that a phone can't. But the fact that you can do all of these things hands-free, with a subtle movement of your head, by simply looking up instead of taking a phone out of your pocket, make these technological actions feel more like an extension of yourself and of your body. There is a big philosophical and experiential difference between speaking "text John I'm running late" into a phone that you're holding in your hands and simply speaking the words out loud and making it so. The video call feature is particularly mind-blowing.

I am excited to bring Glass to the hospital. It seems to me that it would be most useful during surgery when one's hands are otherwise occupied. But I have no doubt that I and others will find uses on the medical floors too. It's practical uses at this point in time will likely be limited by HIPAA-compliance issues, spotty wi-fi, and the other IT issues that only the healthcare industry is fortunate enough to experience. (It's also still socially unacceptable to wear unusual contraptions on one's head during rounds when the attending has just figured out last week how to use a smartphone.) But wait until you put one of these on your own head -- look up into the corner of your vision, and get a glimpse of the future.

Benji Jack

@benjijack