Kinect's New Trick To Be In The Operating Room?

The next proving ground for Microsoft's Kinect? It might not be where you expect. After taking over the living room and exciting gamers across the world, the Kinect has made the move to all sorts of other categories. Everything from making music videos to PC-based hacks have been seen, but for the most part, nothing on a professional level has surfaced. That's all changing now, as the Kinect slides over into the operating room. Doctor's at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Canada are hoping that the Kinect could soon help them out during sophisticated surgeries.

Basically, they're looking to get real-time data feedback without using a mouse; with Kinect, you could simply use it to react to body movements. The goal is to enable doctors to review CT scans while in the surgery room, and since their hands wouldn't ever touch anything (they'd just wave around in front of the Kinect), things would remain sterile. It's not easy to tell if this idea will go viral across hospitals, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched; it's a rather cheap piece of equipment, and anything to make it easier on doctors...well, sounds like a winner to us.