How Does Virtual Reality Help With Healthcare?

What do you think of when you hear the term virtual reality?

  • Do you think of the video games your child plays sitting on the couch, staring at the television?
  • Do you think of lots of action, high entertainment, cool designs and life-like graphics?
  • Do you think of a gamer wearing a headset, swinging his arms as he takes on bad guys no one can see but him?

Thanks to the ever-changing technology we now have in place, virtual reality is so much more.

Virtual reality is a relatively easy technology to implement in today’s business models, and can be done so in a variety of ways. For many healthcare projects, it can provide:

Design Medical Facilities More Effectively

One of the easiest places to use VR is in the design of new office space. Rather than building out space and wishing for changes a short time after you move in, virtual reality lets you try out facilities before you ever break ground or pound a nail. VR removes the ambiguity from design that can lead to costly changes late in the process. It allows doctors and staff members to get a sense of the true scale, spacing and functionality of a room before finalizations occur. It can help a client feel the full volume of a room, discover the flow and the movement, and avoid potential problems especially when duplicating rooms over and over again, such as in a hospital or living facility where rooms repeat throughout the building.

Surgery In Virtual Reality

As technology changes, there are a lot of firsts in the way surgeons operate on patients. Due to demographics, relatively few people can witness these changes, except through write-ups which occur long after the event. With virtual reality, doctors from around the world can see best practices almost first hand. The whole operation can be broadcast live through virtual reality, giving medical professionals the opportunity to share space with some of the greatest minds in the world.

Virtual Reality Can Cure Phobias and Improve PTSD

Therapists and doctors the world over have advocated exposure therapy – where a person confronts that which they are most scared of. With up to five percent of the population severely impacted by significant phobias, virtual reality can offer a major opportunity to those lives that have been impacted, where exposure therapy is often impractical. VR can help clinicians place patients within realistic and immersive scenes that trigger anxieties or fear, then guided through the scene so that they learn how to cope with the situations in which they are placed.

Where else have you seen virtual reality enter the healthcare marketplace? Would it benefit your business environment?