Our brains have highly precise control of our eyes.  And our eyes are the only parts of our brains that are readily observable from the outside world.  Though we normally use our eyes as an input device, eyetracking allows us to use our eyes as an output device to control our environments.  Today, people with severe motor disabilities, who cannot use their hands and cannot speak, use their eyes to type, operate computers, control lights and appliances, and make computers speak for them.  Children go to school and adults go to work using their Eyegaze Communication Systems.

In the future, the visual control concepts currently used by people with disabilities will expand into more medical applications, including patient communication, remote patient monitoring, and surgery. Ventilator-dependent spinal cord injured patients will communicate their needs by looking at a screen that can talk for them.  A nurse at a monitoring station will direct a video camera at precisely what she wants to look at in a patient’s room, merely by looking at images on her screen.  Surgeons will use their eyes to help manipulate both remote cameras and surgical instruments while performing robotic surgery.

See-D. Cleveland’s Presentation-Eyegaze-in-Medical-Applications