My #GoogleGlass Journey: #beforeihadglass

https://twitter.com/googleglass/statuses/316606353282048000

"Me? I never win anything!" I thought. "This is fantastic!" 

And then, I spent the next 24 hours glued to my screen, searching for anything and everything I could find online about Google Glass. 

In the beginning, there wasn't much. How did it work? Why was it created? Who is this guy, Sergey Brin, anyway? I watched his TED talk, and devoured any piece of news I could find. 

Within hours, there was a blogpost including a list of all the winners notified via Twitter, and I scanned for recognizable names...a few celebrities and other well-known folks. Alongside were their Twitter bios and the #ifihadglass tweets, so i began searching for my people: the surgeons. Amazingly, I found another trauma surgeon, all the way across the country in Maine. In minutes, with a direct message, I'd made my first friend via Twitter, starting with an hour-long phone call with a brilliant, telemed trauma geek, Rafael Grossman. We made an immediate connection, a mutual understanding of the great possibilities to connect providers to improve emergency trauma care delivery. To expand the reach of telemedicine, to reflect on and refine the kind of in-the-moment decision making pervasive in our work, to hone surgical skills and documentation, to unlock new educational opportunities and better communicate with the patients we serve...it was almost overwhelming to imagine how much a single device could change how we behave as physicians. It came as no surprise to me that months later, Rafael became the first surgeon to use Glass in the OR. Our first conversation was exhilarating, even though I was still months away from even knowing when I would be invited to purchase Glass!

A crowd-sourced Google Glass Google map soon developed, and I added myself to the Seattle area. Clicking on the various pins representing self-proclaimed Explorers, I found a whole group of local social media pros who were just as excited as I was. This led me straight to Google+, and I unearthed my unused, under-appreciated account that I'd created a year prior. The Seattle Explorers community was born and within a few weeks, we met IRL at a local restaurant. It was thrilling to meet people outside of my professional sphere with real tech experience. As an early adopter in medicine, I'm often met with blank stares and suspicion about how technology and social media can really do anything for patient care or research innovation. Not here! These were my people - and although i was the lone physician, several of them had deep roots to the healthcare community and respect for the uphill battle we face as tech savvy practitioners. Unfortunately, I was on call that night and had to dash away to attend a trauma code...

In the long hours of waiting for something to happen on call, I discovered the husband of one of my partners through his Google+ profile. We connected via Facebook and I came to find out he'd been invited the prior year at Google I/O...complete with glass brick! Eduardo would get glass before any of us #ifihadglass winners, and generously shared the experience with me and my family. For me, the initial experience was fascinating, but really overshadowed by witnessing my digital native sons put them on for the first time. When I was their age, I sat before the blinking green cursor of the Commodore PET computer in elementary school, writing simple basic commands, never imagining that one day I'd be wearing a computer more powerful that that which ran the space shuttle that I would see lift off on TV during a school assembly.

Eduardo also brought his Glass along to a meeting of surgeons in Lake Chelan last month, where we passed it around and continued the conversation about glass in surgery. What would patients think?  In five years, instead of dictating an operative note after the operation, will we simply record the case and annotate it as we go with glass? What about privacy? What about quality improvement? And training? Are we really ready for this?

I'm looking out the window on the Olympics as my trip to San Francisco begins today, thinking how much things have changed since I first tweeted my #ifihadglass contest entry. The community surrounding this project has grown exponentially, all facilitated by social media. I've awakened to the importance of using online interactions to expand my real-life connections and collaborations. I want to be a Glass conduit for: my fellow surgeons, the health systems in which we work, and most of all, the patients we serve. We need to consider how to adopt and adapt, proceeding respectfully and always with an eye to delivering the highest quality of care. It can be unsettling on the bleeding edge of a new technology, but this journey has also brought intense engagement, satisfaction and fun - even before I have Glass. I'm grateful for the time to prepare over the last few months, to ready myself for this. So, watch me now, here we go!