Who says Google Glass are only for glassholes? It might save your life one day.

Stanford Medical School conducted an experiment recently where two groups of Stanford residents were tasked to operate on dummies, only to be faced with unexpected complications. The group wearing Google Glass did better; they kept more focus on the patient because they didn’t have to look away to check vitals.

As one doctor who’ve experimented with using Google Glass in surgery said:

Being able to see your laparoscopic images when you’re operating face to face instead of looking across the room at a projection screen is just mind-bogglingly fantastic.

Using Glass in the operating room has other benefits, like enabling students and other doctors to log-in and learn. The operating doctor can also use it to consult with colleagues on thorny complications during a procedure.

There are of course still lots of issues to be worked out before Glass can be widely adopted by surgeons. Chief among them is privacy — a patient’s identity and confidential information might accidentally be revealed in the stream and uploaded to the cloud. There’s also the danger that Glass can distract.

Another exciting application for Google Glass is when paramedics arrive on the scene — they can broadcast to a doctor with Google Glass so the patient’s situation can be assessed as early as possible. If the situation is dire enough, the doctor might be able to guide the paramedic on what to do.

“Last year, I lost a lady on the table from a spleen injury that was absolutely survivable because she was taken to a local hospital and then the delay was over two hours to get her to me,” Dr. Szotek said. “With this wearable technology, we’ll be able to assess patients on the scene and decrease the mortality associated with trauma significantly.”

With all the exciting gadget news recently, it’s easy to forget that technology can actually save real lives.