Innovation of the week: The Vivi headset

(Image credit: Courtesy image)

published 31 October 2015

The Vivi headset, designed to instantly provide a patient's vitals to surgeons during operations, is a "far cry from many of the slickly designed wearables you see today," said Adrian Covert at Fast Company. The small plastic device, notable for its simplicity, clips onto the headbands and glasses many surgeons already wear in the operating theater, and can be swiveled out of the way when it's not needed.

Vivi is "designed to deliver nothing but the most crucial information," like breathing and heart rates, communicated via a Bluetooth connection with the OR's medical equipment. San Francisco–based design firm Method initially considered using Google Glass for Vivi, but the designers quickly realized it wasn't practical to "shoehorn" their operating-room technology into a product built for general use. Method expects the soon-to-be-released device to be cheaper than other head-mounted displays.