Beyond Military, Meta is Eyeing an XR Expansion into the Medical Field

By
Ben Lang
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7

It was announced recently that Meta is partnering with military tech company Anduril to bring XR technology to the battlefield. New job listings indicate the company is also looking to expand its XR tech into the medical field.

Meta is of course best known for in the XR space for its consumer VR and MR headsets like the Rift and Quest, but the company also thinks its XR tech has a bigger role to play. While Meta has dabbled in the education and enterprise spaces with its headsets for years, the company is now starting to think seriously about the medical field.

New job listings from Reality Labs (Meta’s XR division) show the company wants to fill roles relating to regulatory approval for XR medical products.

“We’re seeking a regulatory affairs specialist to join our medical devices compliance team. You will get to work on wearables and Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) applications for the US and worldwide approvals,” reads the listing for ‘Medical Devices, Regulatory Specialist‘. “You will work on cutting-edge wearable technologies, including augmented reality glasses, wrist wearables, and other innovative devices.”

“Collaborate proactively and establish strategic relationships with external stakeholders (Notified Bodies, FDA, Competent Authorities and other regulatory bodies) to ensure that requirements are known early during strategy development, enabling rapid market access to Meta Reality Labs products,” reads the listing for ‘Medical Devices Regulatory Affairs Strategy Specialist‘.

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It’s unclear exactly which products or services Meta is hoping to bring into the medical space. However, augmented reality glasses like the company’s Orion prototype seem like a natural fit. While there are certainly established medical uses for VR and MR headsets, AR glasses have an advantage in real-world awareness and fidelity thanks to see-through lenses rather than passthrough; this is important for social reasons (doctors being able to look their patients in the eye) and fidelity (a surgeon having an unfiltered view of an operation).

Beyond wearable devices, Meta is also likely to explore the use of conversational artificial intelligence as an aid to medical workers, and it’s wrist-worn input devices as a means of hands-free input.

Considering the often extensive regulatory hurdles in the medical landscape, it could be years yet before we see exactly what Meta plans to bring to market in this field.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Christian Schildwaechter

    TL;DR: This is about reusing existing devices, similar to the Apple Watch being FDA certified as an ECG, not about Meta diversifying into the medical field.

    I've worked in clinical research for a couple of years. In one of the projects I was contracted by a small European medical devices manufacturer to handle their data management systems for a study with which they tried to get FDA approval for the US market. It took about two years, and most of the time was spent with validating systems, documenting and writing SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for everything, including one describing what to do in case I got run over by a bus or in some other way no longer be able to perform my role, with phone numbers of people to call to take over the job and detailed documentation about all the documentation required to keep it running.

    Lots of meetings, very expensive, almost exclusively about data safety and making sure the system couldn't be tempered with, including extra functions to live-log any changes to a remote site. Pretty much the opposite of the "Move Fast and Break Things" Mark Zuckerberg coined as an internal motto in the early Facebook years. And their project management approach at MRL still looks like "let's throw things at the wall and see what sticks", while medical studies require you to first define an expected result, which the studies than either support or falsify. If you find something interesting worth looking in the process, you launch another study instead of changing the current one. No throwing things at walls.

    This for one means that I hope that Meta will not enter the medical devices field, because their culture is completely unfit for the very stringent requirements there. And also causes me to assume their interest is more along the lines of medical side use of exiting devices. In 2024 Apple won FDA approval for use of their Apple Watch as a portable ECG monitoring device that may be used in clinical studies. The required functionality had been in the Apple Watch for years, but they had to run it through the FDA certification parkour to proof data integrity etc, which took years. I'd expect Meta to go for something similar, like the Hypernova EMG wrist band also being able to detect for example tremors. Developed for another purpose, but with potential medical use, if they can get it FDA certified. Them looking for a "Medical Devices Regulatory Affairs Strategy Specialist" also hints in this direction: they aren't looking for someone to develop medical devices, but for someone able to navigate the regulatory jungle that awaits anyone wanting to have a product certified as medical device.

    • VR Bitch

      The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) would be very difficult for a company like that to follow and they would normally be subject to huge fines. I can just imagine all the info escaping the Gynecologists office!

    • Ben Lang

      Good points, could well be a focus on consumer-focused health devices over being on the business side of the medical field. Probably both!

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        I haven't seen any surveys regarding the typical use of Meta's smartglasses yet, but I suspect that it is mostly notifications plus voice assistant plus taking/analyzing photos. The first two are tasks that people now perform with devices like the Apple Watch or AirPods, so these are probably the current main competitors to smartglasses for using your phone without actually holding it.

        For a long time it wasn't really clear what people would do/wanted from smartwatches, as the small screen/interface doesn't work that well for fully blown apps. In the end it mostly boiled down to notifications plus health tracking/feedback, the latter a somewhat surprising use that Apple then fully embraced. So if Meta wants to lure current Apple Watch/AirPod users over to their own smartglasses and wristband, these have to offer the same core features to enable the glasses to work as a replacement, plus something extra.

        Notifications obviously work, simple displays will be integrated soon, the voice assistant is the core feature of smartglasses, the smartwatch touch interface can be replicated with hand tracking, and they also contain speakers and microphones, so the big thing missing (besides lots of app support) is all the health features that mostly boil down to an IMU for tracking movement, GPS for tracking covered distance, and a couple of LEDs and small photo sensors for measuring pulse and oxygen level, which could be easily integrated into the EMG wrist band.

        So Meta's interest in health devices may be motivated primarily by consumers now expecting these features in smart phone add-ons. People might simply refuse to switch from smartwatches to smartglasses if this isn't covered.

  • Sneeding

    >military
    >medical
    Basically a zero sum game

  • ichigo

    This article and photo are perfect example of what people have been saying on here. They don't like the gaming market and desperately want to be something else.

    Every* PR photo modern corpo's release never changes formula. It leave me wondering who is this for? Certainly not the majority in the market you claim you want. Is this even about money and market share….? Maybe fire your marketing teams because they don't seem to care about money and market share.

  • Ivan

    There are other safety issues with video see-through (passthrough) headsets. One issue is the misalignment of the video with real-world objects, even if by a few centimeters or millimeters. Another issue is the possibility of something will block the camera or that the camera or headset will turn off at an inopportune moment. For example, imagine a surgeon using this headset who accidentally cuts a few millimeters off where they believe their scalpel is due to video misalignment and/or a conflict between what they see through the headset and their proprioceptive sense of where their hand is. This may cause them to cut something they shouldn't. Alternatively, imagine both of the surgeon's hands are inside a patient when the headset experiences a software issue that distorts or even turns off the view.

    Though optical see-through headsets still have a relatively small field of view, which will improve over time – the Orion prototype has a 70 field of view (FoV) compared to the current HoloLens 2's 50 FoV – they are safer because of these aforementioned issues do not arise as there is no need to capture the real world with a camera for the user to see it; users can simply look through the lenses.

    However, optical see-through glasses still need improvements in brightness and resolution to allow doctors to view information in very bright environments, which are common in operating rooms. Varifocal lenses are also needed to allow users to focus on objects closer to or farther away from them, providing better depth perception and clarity.