Health and Technology has always been intertwined. Pacemakers, electrocardiograms (ECGs), CT scans and, increasingly, robotic-assisted surgery are all features of clinical care.
The pandemic has accelerated the use of telemedicine to diagnose and sometimes treat patients. Increasingly, patients are taking their health into their own hands with wearable devices that can track heartbeats, arterial pressureand other vital signs.
There is another emerging technology that holds great promise for a variety of diagnostics, treatments, and extended patient care, but it rarely gets the recognition of these other famous technological aids.
Virtual reality (VR), which today is a valuable tool for medical professionals to diagnose patients, helps them get back in shape, improve their mental health and treat disorders.
As pioneering Cedars-Sinai Hospital puts it on its Virtual reality-focused website“Virtual reality is no longer just for gamers; it’s a new kind of mind-body medicine.
Virtual reality is increasingly becoming a key tool for healthcare providers as a training and therapeutic aid. In this article, we’ll explore the latter, identifying the ways virtual reality helps healthcare providers deliver excellent care to their patients.
6 Ways Virtual Reality Can Improve Medical Practice
Here are six virtual reality solutions for healthcare and their development pipelines:
Physical health
For many applications, virtual reality is not a passive activity. High-impact games like Beat Saber and Liteboxer VR boxing game get your heart pumping from the comfort of your own living room. A health institute compared aerobic activity on Beat Saber play tennis.
While getting on a treadmill or going to an exercise class may be a better form of exercise, the reality is that many people choose not to do the latter but may be interested in obtaining tertiary health benefits. while playing games in the comfort of their own home. .
Beyond games that produce health benefits, exercise-specific apps like Supernatural, which have grown in popularity during the pandemic, will continue to keep people active at home. Also, expect more gyms to add VR capabilities to attract tech-obsessed customers.
Meditation/Mental Health
Although it costs nothing to meditate, the reality is that many people need a helping hand to tune out. That’s why Calm, Headspace, and other mindfulness and meditation apps are big business now.
Unsurprisingly, they joined the VR community, where first-person perspectives explain how using virtual reality to meditate was the first time they could truly achieve the mindfulness many seek through meditation. calm sleepin particular, has become a means of treating insomnia, which can lead to mood disorders such as depression or anxiety.
Virtual medicine
A truly impressive use of virtual reality can help patients with everything from burns to PTSD to strokes. RelieVRx is one of the treatments who offer digital pain management programs.
In his book “VRx: How Virtual Therapeutics Will Revolutionize Medicine”, the Cedars-Sinai physician Brennan Spiegel details how virtual reality can help patients while avoiding surgery or painkillers in certain situations. Many treatments are essentially games that calm the mind.
Detect illnesses and injuries
Although there are still many studies in progress, virtual reality can help healthcare providers diagnose conditions as diverse as Alzheimer’s, social anxiety disorder, vertigo, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and concussions. Using puzzle games, virtual reality can provide clues to diseases hidden below the surface, reducing diagnosis time and speeding up the treatment needed to improve quality of life.
Dealing with Identity Disorders
While researching for his book VRx, Dr. Spiegel was surprised to learn how a Montreal doctor used virtual reality to help treat schizophrenia, which affects 1% of the population. The doctor and his team ask patients to describe how the voice looks and sounds in their heads, and they can create it in virtual reality.
The doctor can start communicating with this voice when a patient wears a VR headset, not necessarily to eliminate the voice initially, but to try to turn it from enemy to something more friendly.
Enhanced Telehealth
As Zoom and other video chat platforms help connect doctors and their patients, Virtual reality can go further bringing patient and physicians closer together, while staying in different physical locations, as well as recording patient experience diaries and capturing and analyzing responses.
Results and significant results
As virtual reality matures and more healthcare providers demonstrate meaningful results, we anticipate more use cases will arise. My Co-founder Dr. Sridhar Prathikanti and I’ve long been a proponent of using virtual reality for healthcare because it can help healthcare providers reach hard-to-reach patients and can reduce costs while improving patient outcomes in certain situations.
As more and more patients take control of their own health, the appeal of pursuing treatments in the comfort and privacy of their own home will only increase. Today’s fun VR game could very well be tomorrow’s breakthrough treatment.
The CEO of ConquestVR, Raghu Bathina, provided this guest blog post. Additionally, please visit the ConquestVR website for more information on spatial audio equipment and use cases.
#virtual #reality #revolutionizing #medicine #Today