The upcoming year will be a big one for all kinds of innovation in healthcare, and high on the list of the top 10 innovations for 2017 are three dimensional visualization and augmented reality tools for surgery. Also among the top 10 innovations for healthcare in 2017 is web-based business forms that streamline the sharing of digital healthcare information.

Each fall the Cleveland Clinic assembles a team of more than 100 doctors and healthcare researchers and asks them to come up with the top 10 innovations that are likely to become more mainstream and improve some aspect of the U.S. health system. Topping the list is the increased use of microbesthe bacteria that makes up various communities in the bodyto prevent, diagnosis and treat disease, followed by new diabetes drugs that reduce cardiovascular disease and death.

But numbers six and eight, respectively, on the Cleveland Clinic are the quicker adoption of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR, and three dimensional visualization and augmented reality tools for surgery. FHIR is a draft standard describing data formats and elementsknown as resources–and an Application Programming Interface, or API, for exchanging electronic health records.

Already healthcare systems such as Duke Medical, Geisinger Health System and Mayo Clinic are beginning to use FHIR more. But by naming it a top 10 innovation, the Cleveland Clinic expects more widespread adoption. Digital interoperability is complex in healthcare, which must weigh privacy, security and accuracy concerns, says Cleveland Clinic chief wellness officer Dr. Michael Roizen. But in-house systems have become so diverse and convoluted, its hard for different systems to communicate and nearly impossible for new software companies to penetrate the industry.

The increased use of FHIR, however, will make data sharing easier and more widespread among healthcare organizations. It will essentially function as an interpreter between two healthcare systems or offices that have developed their own languages and the first release will focus on clinical data, like images and medications, while the second will focus on administrative data, like billing and demographics, Roizen says. There are huge implications for healthcare beyond the interoperability of their systems. Innovators and entrepreneurs everywhere can finally take a crack at building smart, data-driven technologies that can be built to a FHIR standard, allowing new technologies to be adopted anywhere. FHIR not only marks a potential end of the frustration, it paves the way for a surge of life-saving health information technology.

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Three-dimensional and augmented reality tools for surgery will be another top 10 innovation in 2017, says the Cleveland Clinic. For example, in the past year, two of the most intricate surgical practices, ophthalmology and neurology, began experimenting with technology that keeps surgeons heads up while immersing them in a high resolution, 3-D visual representations of their subject. These stereoscopic systems also use data to generate visual templates for surgeons to execute certain tasks within a surgery. Experts and surgeons who have piloted the technology say the added comfort and visual information allow surgeons to operate more efficiently and effectively, Roizen says.

Medical residents have a clearer picture of what the surgeon is seeing and doing and software companies are building augmented reality glasses that display holographic images of human anatomy, he says. While the market is still growing and imaginations running wild, several hospitals will be adopting virtual reality tools in 2017.

The Cleveland Clinics top 10 innovation list, which was recently announced at its 2016 Medical Innovation Summit in Cleveland, includes:

  • Using the microbiome to prevent, diagnose and treat disease
  • Diabetes drugs that reduce cardiovascular disease and death
  • Cellular immunotherapy to treat leukemia and lymphomas
  • Liquid biopsies to find circulating tumor DNA
  • Automated car safety features and driverless capabilities
  • Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources
  • Ketamine for treatment-resistant depression
  • 3-D visualization and augmented reality tools for surgery
  • Self-administered HPV tests
  • Bio absorbable stents

The combinations that lead to innovation are much more unusual, Roizen says. We used to develop a drug to treat a disease. Now, were combining devices, drugs and imagination.

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