Say what you want about the wearable technology trend, but sometimes Google Glass can really be used for good. Using the nifty specs, the young patients at the Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital can now see the meerkats, jaguars, giraffes and all the other animals at the Houston Zoo without leaving their bed.
In the video from the Houston-based hospital above, you can just see how the kids’ faces light up as they virtually experience the zoo right from their hospital rooms. Take 6-year-old Jayden, who’s been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and would always try to spot animals at the nearby zoo from the window of his hospital room. Using the Google Hangout feature on the glasses, linked-up zoo staffers were able to take Jayden on a personal tour of the zoo and even brought him backstage to see the sea lions.
Additionally, the children’s hospital touted a study on their YouTube page that Google Glass can being a sense of calm to patients during surgery. The study found that the glasses are also a welcome distraction to the young patients in hospital rooms. “It gave my son a chance to feel like he was a normal kid,” Jayden’s mom said. “He was able to see the zoo [from] a hospital bed—what’s a greater thing than that?” We couldn’t agree more.
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