Today – on World Telecommunication and Information Society Day – the Holomedicine Association becomes open to new members, signifying a huge step towards the advancement of digital health.

Illustrating the breadth of innovation and digital expertise across healthcare, the Holomedicine® Association is a wide network of individual experts determined to transform healthcare and society through augmented, mixed, and virtual reality applications.

By its very establishment, the Holomedicine® Association pioneers a new term – Holomedicine – to describe applications which allow for the practice and delivery of medicine through sensory camera technology viewed through mixed reality glasses, such as the Microsoft HoloLens.

The Association was set up by network of up to 50 founding members who are expert individuals. They include doctors, surgeons, scientists, and policy professionals drawn from around the world. The Association’s seed funding came from lead sponsor Microsoft, with support also from ApoQlar and RPP Group.

The activities of the Holomedicine® Association will be led by a series of working groups and will include overseeing medical studies and producing clinical guidelines, sponsoring PhD programmes, and running international summits to drive awareness of Holomedicine globally.

Sirko Pelzl, Chair of the Holomedicine Association and CEO of ApoQlar, said:

“We are delighted to have opened to new members and look forward to growing our global network in the years ahead. With an ambitious programme of activities ahead, by next year we hope to have grown our membership to 4,000. We are so grateful to Microsoft for the seed funding, and we look forward to now expanding our partnerships to make the association a great success.”

Elena Bonfiglioli, Regional Business Leader for Health and Life Sciences at Microsoft (EMEA), said:

“If we expect a technology to become mainstream, we’re also going to need those who use it to be equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to make the best use of it in the field.  Holomedicine offers an opportunity for technology companies, universities, hospitals and every part of the learning ecosystem to share experiences, develop a collective body of knowledge, champion innovation and create new partnerships that revolutionize medical education, help define new standards and empower even better health outcomes."

The Holomedicine® Association will receive funding from unrestricted and restricted sponsorship grants, working with a range of groups from large corporates to start-ups, universities, governments, and charitable foundations.

For more information contact: secretariat@holomedicine-association.org