Digital Pharma: Genzyme’s augmented reality heart
pharmafile | October 12, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications | Digital Pharma blog, Genzyme, augmented reality
Genzyme Europe has launched a new website that allows users to take a peak inside their own heart, or so the site’s use of augmented reality makes it seem.
Aimed at healthcare professionals who specialise in chronic kidney disease, the Calcified Heart website aims to show them the cardiovascular risk patients may suffer as a result of being prescribed calcium-based medications (called binders).
The Calcified Heart was produced by Windsor-based advertising agency Langland, who were also behind the recent augmented reality gateway for Bayer Healthcare’s Questival website, and it aims to shock doctors by showing the risks of using a calcium, rather than a calcium-free binder.
Genzyme, which launched the calcium-free binder Renvela last June, said it has already showed the new technology to healthcare professionals at conferences and on-line.
“This digital wizardry has been a great success,” said Suzanna van Straaten, Genzyme’s senior renal marketing manager for Europe. “Not only has it created new interest in the treatment of chronic kidney disease, but it has helped them visualise the dangers of a calcified heart.”
Augmented reality adds interactive, superimposed computer-generated imagery to a view of the real world, and on the Calcified Heart site visitors who hold a special print-out up to their webcam are shown a door in their chest opening to reveal a beating heart.
This quickly opens to reveal the internal chambers of the working organ, beating and healthy, only for the dangers of using calcium-based binders to emerge in the form of calcium deposits that appear within the vessels.
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Related Content
Use of Genzyme’s MS drug Lemtrada restricted under ongoing EMA safety review
The EMA has launched a review into Genzyme’s multiple sclerosis drug Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) after reports …
Alnylam and Sanofi close research phase of 2014’s $700m RNAi rare disease partnership
Alnylam and Sanofi have announced their intention to bring to an end the research and …
Cancer drugs prices vary up to 388% between high-income countries
The price of new cancer drugs varies widely between high-income countries in Europe, Australia, and …
