The most bizarre thing occurs when you enter a specific hospital room in Lancaster, Texas. Your doctor greets you, leans forward, and inquires about how the incision is healing as you take a seat across from him. Commonplace items.
However, your physician isn’t present. Inside a black-trimmed box that weighs as much as a baby grand piano, he is a hologram that is projected so convincingly that patients occasionally forget there isn’t a real doctor within fifty miles.
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Subject | Holobox 3-D Telehealth System |
| Developer | Holoconnects (Netherlands) |
| First U.S. Hospital User | Crescent Regional Hospital, Lancaster, Texas |
| Device Dimensions | 7 feet tall, 440 pounds |
| Unit Cost | $42,000 |
| Annual Service Fee | $1,900 |
| Launch Date | May 2024 |
| Primary Use | Pre- and post-operative consultations |
| Key Executive | Raji Kumar, Managing Partner and CEO |
| Industry Context | Growing telehealth adoption post-pandemic |
| Adoption Outside Healthcare | 12 hotels currently using Holobox, 18 more planned |
This is the new reality at Crescent Regional Hospital, which partnered with the Dutch company Holoconnects to start providing holographic visits in May. The gadget, known as a Holobox, weighs 440 pounds, stands seven feet tall, and costs $42,000 plus an annual service charge. To be honest, it looks like something a recent graduate of art school might create for a nightclub in Berlin. However, it contains a remarkably lifelike three-dimensional representation of a doctor hundreds of miles away, staring back at you through their own cameras and monitors, on a large reflective screen.
The entire setup has an almost theatrical quality. The majority of telehealth involves a flat rectangle on a laptop with the kitchen visible behind them and the doctor’s face hovering awkwardly close. It’s difficult to explain the Holobox’s uniqueness until you see it. The entire body appears. Once more, posture is important. A webcam frame does not obscure a doctor’s gait, gestures, or subtle forward lean when they want to appear reassuring.
The more difficult question is whether any of that truly results in better medicine. Eric Bressman, a digital medicine assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is not persuaded. According to him, there is no evidence that a holographic visit yields better clinical results than a standard video call. He has good reason to push back. Access, cost, and quality are the three metrics that medicine typically uses to assess new technology, and the Holobox clearly doesn’t change any of them. To use it, patients still need to drive to the hospital.
Crescent Regional’s manager, Raji Kumar, is aware of this. She is not claiming that the Holobox increases access or saves money in any traditional way. She makes a softer case that emphasizes emotion over practicality. She claims that when a doctor appears to be physically present, patients act differently. They participate more. They pay attention for longer. The size of the screen and the lighting deceive the brain into perceiving something that is similar to actual contact. That might be important. It’s also possible that in ten years, we’ll look back on this and question why someone paid forty-two thousand dollars to replicate something Zoom primarily does for free.
When asked about results, Steve Sterling, the head of Holoconnects’ North American division, was surprisingly forthright. He refuses to acknowledge that the box affects recovery times or survival rates. He will say that it alters the tone of the patient-physician dialogue, and hospital administrators believe that texture may have some value in this draining era of fragmented care.
In fact, hotels have embraced the technology more quickly than hospitals. Twelve of them currently use it, and eighteen more are on the way, primarily for remote check-ins and concierge services. That seems like a better fit, according to Chad Ellimoottil, who is in charge of virtual care at the University of Michigan. A wow moment is what hospitality seeks. Results are what medicine seeks.
Even so, it’s difficult to ignore the slight flicker of something as you watch this play out. Perhaps not conviction. Perhaps it was just curiosity. Years ago, Tesla encountered the same kind of skepticism, which eventually subsides as the technology gains traction. It’s genuinely unclear if the Holobox will succeed on its own. For now, in a hospital outside of Dallas, patients are seated across from physicians who are not present, engaging in conversations that seem almost genuine. Make what you want out of that.
