Virtual Reality in Healthcare: Overview

Virtual reality makes for more effective theoretical learning of medical students and starting-out healthcare professionals. With VR, learners can inspect 3D medical models in the details, which can’t be reproduced in physical models, or learn to communicate with AI-controlled virtual patients, whose attitude and behavior can be easily altered for different learning purposes (e.g., communication with patients who are non-native English speakers).

How VR for medical education works: Any virtual learning session can be held in groups or individually and guided either by a real tutor, who is also connected to the VR app or by a virtual preprogrammed tutor controlled by the AI algorithms.

Use cases:

• Anatomy learning.
• Medical social skills learning.

VR software that focuses specifically on practical medical training helps medical school graduates and healthcare professionals alike acquire hands-on skills in risk-free conditions. This type of healthcare VR allows simulating scenarios that are difficult, dangerous, or expensive to recreate in real life.

How VR for medical training works: Upon entering a VR app’s simulated environment, a user becomes a part of a training scenario that expects them to complete predetermined steps in, for instance, performing a medical procedure or handling medical equipment. A separate analytical module continuously records the taken actions and assesses a medical professional’s performance based on set criteria.

Use cases:

• Medical procedure simulation.
• Emergency case simulation.
• Medical equipment use training.

By allowing surgeons to perform different types of mock-surgeries in the virtual space, VR helps eliminate practical skill deficiency faster. Surgeons can become skilled professionals without using expensive onetime use mannequins for training.

How VR for surgery works: With the help of haptic controllers, a surgeon performs a virtual surgery in a virtual operating room. From start to finish, software guides a user through the necessary steps, letting them remember the right sequence of actions. The VR app can also be used for explaining the surgery process to patients.

Use cases:

• Surgical training.
• Pre-surgical planning.
• Medical device marketing.

Virtual reality pain management apps help lower the level of pain or extreme discomfort by effectively diverting a patient’s attention. This type of VR helps minimize the use of potentially harming painkillers and reduce healthcare costs.

How VR for pain management works: After being immersed in the VR simulation, a patient can either become a part of an interactive gamified experience or transferred to a highly realistic environment with a soothing atmosphere that, together with audio stimulation, helps put their mind at ease.

Use cases:

• Chronic pains.
• Acute pains.
• Medical procedure pain.
• Mental pain and anxiety.

By moving rehabilitation exercises into the virtual realm, VR turns patients’ therapy sessions into a gamified experience that motivates users to strive for better results via virtual goals and achievements. Software’s built-in AI can provide detailed guidance and inspiring support instead of a real therapist, allowing for cheaper and timewise flexible individual rehabilitation.

How VR for rehabilitation works: The VR app guides a patient through their personal training program stored in the software database. A therapist can edit the program anytime as well as control the results – either via the app’s analytics module or by virtually joining the VR session as an instructor.

Use cases:

• Neurological rehabilitation.
• Physical therapy.
• Cognitive rehabilitation.

Virtual physical therapy can offer patients a wide range of exercises – from general orthopedics to injury-recovery. The exercises can be created for specific age-groups too, thus helping children to develop motor skills and older patients – to preserve their agility. Special sessions can also be created for people, who are learning to use a cane or a prosthetic limb.

How VR for physical therapy works: All exercises can be supervised by either an AI-based virtual instructor or a real instructor, who joins the VR sessions remotely. A comprehensive analytics system continuously monitors a patient’s condition and ensures that the exercises do not harm a patient's health in any way.

Use cases:

• Sports injuries.
• Child care/Geriatrics.
• Adaptation to assistive devices or prosthetics.

To effectively recover after stroke, patients re-learn to perform their typical daily actions in the virtual environment. Patients can access a rich database of exercises that help them restore motor skills or improve spatial orientation abilities without posing any risks of damage to self, others or the objects they manipulate. The rehabilitation can be remote, thus allowing to significantly minimize the costs of treatment and transportation.

How VR for stroke rehabilitation works: While post-stroke patients perform repetitive exercises in the VR world, the integrated machine-learning algorithms continuously monitor their performance and automatically adjust the difficulty to ensure progress. Therapists can access the admin panel to check how far their patients progressed or what exercises they got stuck on.

Use cases:

• Physical function restoration.
• Cognitive abilities improvement.