No industry has wrapped its proverbial arms around Google Glass like the healthcare industry, and this week brought news of another new and unique test that’s set to begin next week.

On Tuesday, Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston will begin using Glass to help moms stay in contact with their newborns that have been moved to the intensive care unit. According to the Boston Globe, about one in every seven babies born at Brigham go to newborn ICU. The average stay there is about three weeks, which is a long time for a mom and her baby to be apart.

The test is the brainchild (sorry for the pun) of Brigham nurse Stephanie Shine, whose own baby was in newborn ICU for 101 days.

Hundreds of babies are separated from their mothers after birth at Brigham each year because one or both of them need immediate care. Shine wants those moms to see their newborns through the eyes of their partners: They will wear Google Glass while visiting the intensive care unit, and the images they see will stream live to a tablet computer in the mom’s hands.

The mom will be able to hear the nurses talking about her baby and ask questions, as if she were in the room.

The experiment aims to find out if using Glass can help relieve the stress that mom feels while she and her newborn are separated.

We’ve written a lot about the various uses of Glass in healthcare, and no doubt there’ll be many more tests like this to come in 2015 and beyond.

(Photo credit: howardignatius via photopin cc.)