Roche is using mixed reality for the presentation of oncological therapies

Emphasize the importance of therapeutic innovation through the use of new technologies and maximise interaction and experience by enabling a new learning method that involves the use of holographic systems. With these premises, McCann Health Italy - an agency specialized in medical-scientific communication and development of educational projects in the medical field - delivered an interesting training project supported by Roche Italia. It is based on Mixed Reality and Microsoft HoloLens technology thanks to the technical support of Infinity Reply, a Reply group company specialized in 3D visualization and customized extended reality solutions. "Mixed Reality allows to define more engaging and effective training projects because it is possible to carry out simulations of complex processes while maintaining high levels of interaction with the content and with all its users", underlines Gianfranco Mattia, Head Of Digital at McCann Health Italy.

The project was presented at a roadshow, organised by Roche Italia, dedicated to medical specialists on pulmonary immunotherapy as a new frontier of treatment that touched three cities in two months, to promote the sharing of clinical experiences through technological innovation.

The advanced Mixed Reality system - which involved the holographic reconstruction of the cell and the cellular microenvironment thanks to the visualisation of the molecules and the ways of binding to specific receptors - allowed the participants who wore HoloLens viewers to "get inside" the dynamics of the mechanism of action of different therapeutic regimes, transforming the immersive experience into a shared didactic moment.

"Doctors have shown great enthusiasm for the use of mixed reality to investigate complex issues, defining this learning methodology more effective than the classic modalities so far used in medical information events", explains Carlotta Gaggini, Product Manager Tecentriq, Cancer Immunotherapy of Roche. Again thanks to HoloLens, the comparison on clinical experiences has taken on a new multidimensional connotation: starting from a 3D model of a patient's chest, it was possible to reproduce CT images taken at different moments of the disease, allowing participants to view them in sequence and follow their evolution in the face of specific clinical choices.

"The great advantage of using these innovative methodologies, in specialised disciplines such as oncology where increasingly complex therapies appear, lies in the greater understanding, through visualisation, of the mechanisms of action of drugs, such as immunotherapies, and their different combinations and interactions. Being able to view and discuss live the mechanism of action of drugs and the interactions between them brings great added value to clinicians to fully understand how they work", Gaggini underlines.

Starting from the realization of this itinerant training event, the future applications of Mixed Reality in the medical-scientific field promise to be numerous. Interacting with a holographic interface applied to reality will in fact allow the digital reproduction of clinical events, allowing intervention even remotely and paving the way for new telemedicine scenarios. Mixed Reality is in fact much more technologically advanced than Virtual Reality, not only because it combines the use of different technologies, sensors, and wearable devices, but also because it allows us to experience increasingly vast realistic scenarios.