Virtual Reality in Healthcare
The healthcare industry is one of the largest adopters of Virtual reality, VR, and it covers various areas like surgery simulation, robotic surgery, medical training, phobia treatment, pain management, and physical therapy.
One advantage of VR technology in the medical industry is that professionals can seamlessly learn new skills and also refresh existing skills all in one environment. Furthermore, they can achieve all this without causing any danger to a patient.
Let’s take a closer look at some areas that have been largely influenced by VR in the medical industry. This includes:
- Human simulation training
- VR diagnostics
- Virtual robotics surgery
- Mental health and psychological therapy
- Pain management and physical therapy
Human simulation training and patient education
One application of VR in healthcare is the Human simulation system (HumanSim), which empowers doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to interact with others in an interactive environment. This is utilized in training sections for patients using a 3D environment. Sensors are used to measure the participant’s emotions in this scenario.
Virtual Reality (VR) diagnostics
There is an improvement in diagnosis by doctors in present times. This can be attributed to the fact that Virtual reality diagnostic tools are now being used in conjunction with other medical procedures like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans. This helps in removing invasive procedures or surgery.
Virtual Robotics Surgery
The application of Virtual reality is becoming more popular in robotics surgery. This is simply the deployment of robotic devices to perform surgical operations. This is controlled by a human surgeon. Using VR robots reduces surgical operation time and risk of complication. There is also the aspect of telesurgery – this is when surgery is performed remotely by a surgeon at a different location from that of the patient.
Mental Health /Psychological Therapy
The uniqueness of VR to take someone somewhere else has been utilized by psychologists and therapists in recent times. This has been used to create simulations in which the client is taken on a trip to certain scenarios that were difficult or impossible to recreate before. Take, for instance, flying or the harrowing events that can lie behind PTSD can now be conjured or fabricated just by the click of a mouse. Furthermore, in-situ coaching needed for most disorders can now be done in the confines of the consulting room with the help of Virtual reality. Other sections of mental health that have seen great changes from VR include:
- Memory Loss curbing
- Helping autistic children
- Gathering data for dementia research
VR pain relief/management and physical therapy
VR indeed has great healing capabilities when it comes to psychological therapy. The same can be said about physical therapy and pain management. Full VR immersion for those undertaking physical therapy after undergoing skin grafting has been shown to act as a distraction and thus reduce the level of pain experienced by patients. Furthermore, VR therapy has also been proven to be very effective in speeding up the recovery time of patients. This allows for patients to carry out their prescribed daily exercises in a virtual environment while catching fun, staying focused, and lifting their spirits despite the long recovery period.
Unlike many VR systems, Ready Team One (RTO) can handle all areas in the health industry, our VR solutions. We have developed a free room VR platform that gives users the freedom to walk around and within an artificial environment without any form of restrictions; cables attached to a static PC. Our solution also supports simultaneous users, thereby offering the ability to facilitate a group that can interact, see, and hear all within the virtual environment.
Our Background
We are Ready Team One (RTO), an Australian based company that specializes in developing customized Virtual reality Solutions – both hardware and software. We initially registered our presence in the market by offering one of the best VR entertainments. We have moved it up a notch by opening an industry side of the business.
What makes us different – while we can offer all types of VR, we specialize in Free-Roam VR, where multiple users can move around, see, hear, and interact within a large shared area (normally 100 square meters). We have also developed full-body tracking technology, which accurately mirrors the real-life movements of the user into the virtual world with all parts included.
Free roam is not always required for every industry, but we can customize the solution based on your needs. You can contact us for your customized solution.
You can also find out more here: www.readyteamone.com
