The use of Virtual Reality (VR) is not just restricted to the gaming world, it is also witnessing massive utilization in other industries over time. This 3D technology has the enormous potential to elevate your business to the next best level. Let’s first check out:
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated 3D technology that naturally lets you closely interact with the digital world. Due to this technology’s impact, users are perceived to be transported to a new environment which is very different from the real world.
It is estimated that in 2024, the global market size of VR will reach $12 billion (Statista).
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Why Should You Consider VR in Healthcare Training?
The healthcare segment always explores new alternatives to serve patients with personalized treatment and care. VR has the potential to solve all your requirements very smoothly.
Walter Greenleaf (a VR expert on medical applications) “Although entertainment, social connection and gaming will drive the initial adoption of Virtual Reality technology, the deepest and most significant market for VR will be in clinical care and in improving health and wellness”.
It is estimated that in 2029, the global VR market in the healthcare sector will witness a thumping amount of $6.20 billion (Fortune Business Insights). This presents a big opportunity to serve the healthcare industry with immersive VR treatment solutions.
Utilizing VR in healthcare will help you to derive benefits like:
- Immersive Training Experience
Medical students must be acquainted with human anatomy. Similarly, they must also acquire practical skills in administering medicines and syringes, performing surgeries, and other treatment procedures.
VR helps you obtain a 360-degree virtual tour that allows you to observe various inner body portions without immersing in dissection. At the same time, the technology lets you practice various treatment and surgical procedures in a simulated 3D technology multiple times very flawlessly.
Noticing this engaging impact, many medical and health institutions are establishing communication with a reputed VR app development company to bring out immersive learning apps.
- Overcome Mental Disorders
According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (WHO Director-General), “Good mental health is absolutely fundamental to overall health and well-being,”.
It is very challenging to recover patients from mental issues like depression, autism, schizophrenia, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), etc. VR assists you in tackling such disorders with a satisfactory outcome.
The simulated 3D environment diverts a patient’s mind to a new world with plenty of amusements and fun. Moreover, it allows psychologists to run simulated mental wellness programs. Such immersive programs will not just help restore the normal state of mind but also assist in naturally overcoming phobias and other psychological weaknesses.
- Thorough Diagnosis
VR also works excellently when diagnosing your health conditions. Integrating this advanced technology with CT scan, MRI, ECG, and other diagnostic procedures allows doctors to obtain better visuals of your affected body portions within a short duration. This lets them serve patients with the right treatment solutions.
It will be fruitful to consult a reputed VR app development company when developing these immersive apps. This will let you achieve the desired outcome very smoothly.
- Relaxing Patients
Children and elders, especially, frighten a lot when visiting a clinic. The fear mainly arises with the possibility of receiving pain during treatment or diagnosis. As a result, it becomes quite difficult for doctors to treat patients properly. Hence, to calm such patients down, VR provides a reliable alternative.
The simulated 3D background of this technology will help divert your patients’ mood to a new world very smoothly. This eventually helps you to assess the health condition of patients very comfortably.
It is one of the notable benefits of VR in medical training. You must learn the techniques when attempting to divert a patient’s mind using VR. This will help to proceed correctly to relax your patients better.
- Educating Patients
Patients and their relatives must thoroughly explain the purpose of various surgical, medical, and diagnostic procedures that doctors decide to conduct depending on the health conditions. It will ensure full cooperation and patient approval during implementing these procedures.
Initially, doctors have to undertake a lot of efforts to simply describe the diagnostic and medical procedures to patients. This created doubt in a patient’s mind and receiving approval became very difficult.
Now, VR helps to remove all such doubts by presenting lively visuals of every procedure. It helps patients to understand your treatment methods very lucidly within a short time. This has simplified the task of convincing patients and obtaining their approval when conducting diagnostic or other medical procedures.
Observing this influence, many health institutes now want to utilize VR to educate patients with the help of a reputed App development company.
- Motivate Patients Strongly
Patients tend to give up good health practices like running, walking, cycling, swimming, etc. due to a lack of entertainment and amusements. Eventually, this negligence deteriorates your health which becomes very difficult to recover with time.
VR will work impressively in such a scenario. The immersive 3D technology has the potential to motivate patients and fitness enthusiasts by introducing gamification elements. This will make your regular workouts experience very entertaining and amazing throughout the year.
When adding gamification with VR, consulting a reputed App development company will be pretty fruitful.
- Immersive Guidance
Doctors often serve patients with various therapeutical guidelines that must be practiced at home regularly. These may either be doing physical exercises like push-ups, ankle stretches, etc., or practicing mental therapies like meditation.
VR shall help you to observe the procedure of every physical and mental therapy quite closely. This shall help you grasp the techniques smoothly within a short time. If you are stuck anywhere, simply wear a VR headset and repeatedly watch the procedure. It saves your time. You do not have to schedule an appointment with a doctor again to proceed correctly.
Use Cases of VR in Healthcare
Now, we shall discuss some of the proven use cases of implementing VR in healthcare services. Let’s have a look below:
1. Separation of Conjoined Twins Using VR
Recently, doctors have successfully separated two infants, who initially took birth as conjoined twins, in a Rio de Janeiro-based hospital. It is a very tough surgery that involves plenty of analysis and mock drills to ensure a successful outcome.
VR has helped doctors to conduct multiple rehearsals in a simulated environment before separating these twins. It has allowed them to assess the potential health impacts these infants may be subjected to in advance to proceed with the prescribed surgery.
According to the hospital spokesperson, this landmark surgery has also received active supervision from the London-based Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Doctors have to spend months practicing the surgical procedure with the help of VR projections after obtaining these twins’ MRI and CT scan reports.
According to surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani, this surgery can be described as “space-age stuff”. He also said that to conduct this pathbreaking surgery, doctors from both these countries wore VR headsets to perform this procedure jointly on a common platform.
Seven surgeries were conducted to separate these twins, involving about 100 health staff. Presently, these babies are recovering very smoothly. It will take 6 months to ensure complete recovery after surgery. This incident indeed represents a miracle of VR in medical training.
2. Parents Visualized their Child’s Surgery with the help of VR
Virtual Reality will serve you excellently when seeking visualization.
A London-based hospital used VR to convince parents when doctors have planned to conduct a skull surgery on their child. A 6-month-old child Archie was witnessing a skull problem.
The doctors described this condition as Sagittal Synostosis, where the brain will continue to grow but the sideway skull growth will never happen. This will tend to distort the child’s health shape.
Initially, the child’s parents were reluctant about the idea of surgery. Then the doctor’s convinced them by using VR technology. The VR visualization has addressed all their doubts very smoothly. It showed how the skull condition of their child will be normalized after the surgery. Besides, VR doctors also depict how the surgery will be performed to avoid adverse health impacts.
3. Long-term Pain Reduction with VR Therapy
VR has a proven track record of minimizing chronic lower back pain to a great extent. We shall now discuss this issue at a stretch.
Sometimes back, a research conducted by AppliedVR on people suffering from chronic lower back pain. It used an innovative therapeutic tool known as RelieVRx to diagnose its long-term impact on pain reduction.
About 188 candidates suffering from chronic lower back pain participated in the research. They were given a survey sheet to record their experiences after receiving the treatment. It was an 8-week therapy program.
The survey report found that the therapeutic measure works very well. People who participated in this research significantly reduced back pain within 6 months. In brief, the pain intensity tends to become lower in 6 months without adverse health impact.
Moreover, the survey also revealed that the therapy also helped to reduce stress and sleep disturbance to a great extent.
This therapeutic tool has got FDA approval in November 2021. Undoubtedly, this can also be regarded as one of the noteworthy VR health benefits to attain comprehensive recovery naturally.
Few More Use Cases for VR in Healthcare
- Immersive Medical Education
- Better Surgery
- Patient Interactions Anywhere
- Mental Health Treatment
- Improved Collaboration
Conclusion
VR is constantly helping the healthcare industry to serve patients quite smoothly. It is helping institutes to train medical students and staff with immersive audio-visual tutorials. Moreover, this immersive technology allows doctors to diagnose your health problem quite thoroughly to ensure proper treatment. This technology’s simulated environment helps you practice multiple times to ensure accuracy and safety when performing complicated surgeries. VR also works smoothly to overcome mental ailments quite smoothly.