The Good Doctor

Work Title: The Good Doctor
Medium: TV Episode
Episode Title: Intangibles
Year: 2017
Writer(s): David Shore
"Original" Writer: No Writer(s): Jae-Beom Park
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: Yes
Summary:

As part of St. Bonaventure hospital's international humanitarian program, the team takes on the case of a young boy from the Congo who has severe congenital heart anomalies. Dr. Neil Melendez has doubts about the safety of the procedure, while Dr. Shaun Murphy works out the best course of action. Meanwhile, Murphy's latest encounter with his neighbor Lea has him confused.

Era/Year of Portrayal: present_day
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

The doctors are able to practice a heart surgery using Virtual Reality before actually performing the surgery on the patient.

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: They do not call it by name
  • Description of the technology: It is a hologram of the patients heart. The doctors have on a VR set, study the heart and perform surgery on it.

    It is not mobile. They are in a lab/operating room.

    The doctor's are able to open up the heart and examine the problem with the patient's heart. They also are able to use virtual tools when they operate on the heart.

    It is very high quality. The doctor's are able to interact easily with the system. They able to give voice commands as they are doing the practice surgery.

    The hologram heart is helpful.

  • Nature of task or activity: Opens up the heart and performs surgery.
  • Performance of the Technology: The reason the doctor's are using a hologram first as practice is because they are about to perform a risky surgery.
    It works exactly how it would if they were doing the surgery on the actual patient.
  • Description of creator(s): This technology does not exist in hospitals in the real world. In the show however, it already exists and is probably a commonly used mechanism. So the creators of this technology is the creators of the tv show.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): The goal of this is to show us where technology is headed in hospitals. Also, for entertainment purposes as well.
  • Description of users of technology: Dr. Murphy: Male, surgical resident student in his 20's. He has autism and savant syndrome.

    Dr. Melendez: Male, highly skilled Surgeon in his 30's or early 40's.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: spatial_presence
  • Description of presence experience: I would say the doctor's are not as stressed as they would in real life surgery. Every time they make a mistake, they are able to do it over again, without worrying about the life of the patient.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: They are aware of the technology they are using.
  • Valence of experience: They find it enjoyable.
  • Specific responses: You can assume that the technology has been used a lot by the doctors so they are not as fascinated with it as someone using it for the first time. They are more focused on doing the heart surgery.
Long-term consequences:

The long term consequences of this technology is good. The patient survived the surgery and has a healthy beating heart.

Other:

In real life, if this technology is brought to hospitals sometime in the future, I can see only positive outcomes.

Coder name: Indira Mitchell
Coder email: tug85315@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University