Earlier this week, I watched some online videos that were both grisly and inspiring. They showed a team of surgeons conducting colorectal, cardiac and neurological procedures — scalpels, blood and all.

But instead of clustering around the patient in an operating theatre, as depicted in TV shows such as ER, the surgeons were scattered: some were beside the patient; others were many miles away, guiding their colleagues with a (virtual) hand, thanks to augmented reality.

Call this, if you like, Zoom for surgeons — instead of conducting an office meeting via video, they are inserting a scalpel into a brain. Or as Nadine Hachach-Haram, a plastic surgeon in the UK’s NHS and the founder of Proximie, the platform I watched, says: “The idea is to bring virtual healthcare workers together — we are digitising the operating theatre and bringing it to people around the world.”