Augmented, Alternate and Virtual Realities in Education

Click discovers how VR helps parents decide whether to go through with surgery for their child.

If you're undergoing surgery, you want the best surgical team to collaborate on your case, no matter where they are. Surgeon and entrepreneur Nadine Hachach-Haram is developing a new system that helps surgeons operate together and train one another on new techniques -- from remote locations using low-cost augmented reality tools. Watch the system in action as she joins a surgeon in Minnesota performing a knee surgery, live on her laptop from the TED stage in New Orleans. As Hachach-Haram says: "Through simple, everyday devices that we take for granted, we can really do miraculous things." (This talk contains graphic images of surgery.)

Critical care doctor Peter Weinstock shows how surgical teams are using a blend of Hollywood special effects and 3D printing to create amazingly lifelike reproductions of real patients -- so they can practice risky surgeries ahead of time. Think: "Operate twice, cut once." Glimpse the future of surgery in this forward-thinking talk.