Just come across this, the Sectra Visualisation Table, a touch screen table that allows, in its early offering, medics to collaborate interactively to learn about and prepare for surgical procedures.
With the visualization table the hopsital’s doctors can easily assess size, form and orientation of a tumor and its relation to surrounding tissue and vessels. They can thus commence the surgical procedure with a well-aligned strategy and an awareness of complicating factors, which saves time and improve the outcome of surgery.
The idea of collaborative, social interactions based around visualisation on digital workspaces is not new and I saw demonstrations of such devices a number of years ago, yet we are still to see this idea catch on and really penetrate beyond the truly specialist fields, notably within medicine. I suspect this is because we just haven’t worked out how to work collaboratively more than it is about any barriers to the technology.