A Life in a Day: helping doctors understand their patients with AR

Vention's augmented reality expertise paired technology with empathy to create a powerful tool for A Life in a Day's health professionals.

About the client

Healthcare must be empathetic. That’s the core belief behind the services of A Life in a Day, a UK-based healthcare company that uses AI, augmented reality, and theatre to provide medical and life science professionals with a realistic experience of living a day with a specific medical condition.

Challenge

Early during development, A Life in a Day’s in-house team realised they would need external help to design and implement augmented reality (AR) in their healthcare app.

Given our expertise in the field, Vention was approached to develop an AR mask depicting the initial stages of alopecia from scratch and then integrate it into the app’s iOS and Android versions.

Our solution

Our AR overlay integrations were created in record time, leveraging the latest visual recognition tech to reach a wide range of healthcare professionals.

An AR project developed for multiple devices

On the iOS side, our engineers employed Apple ARKit’s built-in AI model to detect the user’s face on the screen accurately and, with suitable algorithms, position the mask using the top of the head as a reference.

For the Android version, our team went with ARCore, a large Google-based framework with many APIs for mobile app development at our disposal. We used these to identify facial features and implement occlusion based on the size and position of the user’s face so that the mask could work as intended.

Focus on inclusivity and attention to detail

To ensure that the transparent mask seamlessly matches the user’s skin tone, we added a feature to fetch the mask’s intended colour directly from the user through the camera, achieving the closest possible match.

Finally, to enhance the mask's natural appearance, our 3D artists used the graphics software Blender to create an overlaying skin-like texture with numerous intricate details, including follicles and ageing marks, for an improved overall effect.

The results

We delivered on our partner’s needs on time and on budget — every time.

Our collaboration with A Life in a Day was so exceptional that they now use the integrated AR solutions we’ve introduced for all AR requirements, providing higher quality for less investment.

Moreover, since the original alopecia project, we’ve also successfully developed masks for obesity, stroke, and jaundice, tapping into the same technologies we used in our initial solution.

Key stats

Vention specialists

3 months of partnership (and counting!)

AR integration overlays implemented

Tools & technologies

Frameworks

Apple ARKit

Google AR Core

Libraries

Snap Kit

Creative software

Adobe Photoshop

Lens Studio

Blender