Meet the doctor who conducts eye surgery using Apple Vision Pro headset
Despite weak sales and high returns, Apple Vision Pro has shown promise in healthcare, with a doctor successfully using it to perform cataract surgeries.
Apple Vision Pro was in the news recently due to its poor sales. A MacRumors report suggests it received an unusually high percentage of returns, far exceeding any other modern Apple product, and reports also suggest Apple has shelved or at least scaled down work on future models. Be that as it may, the Vision Pro may have found its true calling somewhere else: in healthcare. Recently, a doctor used the Apple Vision Pro to perform a cataract surgery for the first time, and it seems he is really impressed with how the process went.
Dr. Eric Rosenberg at SightMD performed the surgery using Apple Vision Pro powered by ScopeXR, a mixed reality surgical platform he co-developed. ScopeXR streams live footage from 3D surgical microscopes to the Vision Pro, allowing surgeons to see the operation in 3D while viewing important diagnostic data at the same time.
Dr. Eric completed the first surgery in October 2025, and since then, he has completed hundreds of additional procedures using the same setup. The procedure marked the first time a cataract surgeon used a spatial computing headset as the main visualization tool during surgery.
Real-time collaboration and remote expertise
ScopeXR also enables real-time remote collaboration, letting surgeons and specialists join procedures from anywhere. They can see the same live surgical feed and data as the operating surgeon and communicate through secure two-way audio.
"We are now able to bring the world's best surgeon into any operating room, at any hour, from anywhere on the planet," said Dr. Rosenberg in a company press release. "From residents performing their first cases to surgeons facing unexpected complications, this technology democratizes access to expertise and that will save vision."
Vision Pro’s market struggles
Vision Pro was a special project within Apple. It has its own development team, but it was not designed for the mass market. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen in 2024, Tim Cook said, “At $3,500, it's not a mass-market product. Right now, it's an early-adopter product. People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there are enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”
Meanwhile, in his latest Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman said that the Vision Pro is selling worse than in previous years. “Whatever momentum the device had during its 2024 launch and international expansion, and later with the M5 chip update, has largely dissipated. In Apple’s retail stores, hands-on demos have slowed and consumer demand looks softer,” Gurman wrote. Though, when put to good use, the Vision Pro looks like it could be a great fit in highly-specialised areas highlighting how far-ahead Apple's vision is and could be.