The possible applications of virtual reality go far beyond gaming and entertainment. VR technology’s immense potential is going to extend far beyond the commonly-known applications, including immersive gaming and virtual entertainment experiences.
Medical VR is one such area with amazing possibilities. VR in the medical field has moved the imaginations of not just science-fiction fans, but also clinical researchers and medical practitioners. It’s a brand-new field, but there are already some great examples of how VR could positively affect patient care and physicians’ work.
Virtual Reality is being used in exposure therapy as a treatment for patients with phobias. At the University of Louisville, psychiatrists are using VR to help patients handle fears of things such as flying and claustrophobia. The VR experiences help patients face their fears and practice coping strategies, all while in a controlled environment that’s private, safe, and can be easily stopped or repeated.
Meditation is a popular treatment for general anxiety. There are many VR apps available that help users meditate by placing them in virtual environments. One such app, called the IntelliSense HRV, teaches users how to take deep, meditative breaths by making users’ heart rate variability (HRV) the only control for the game.
The app works with a heart-rate sensor worn around the chest or clipped to the earlobe, which measures HRV, which is controlled by the user through proper breathing techniques. The VR experiences are something like being on a tropical beach, a flower valley, and an oasis.
Breathing proper is what transforms the surroundings, making them even more beautiful.
Virtual reality is also being used to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. According to a paper from the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, VR’s use goes as far back as 1997, when Georgia Tech released Virtual Vietnam VR.
Today, clinics and hospitals are using virtual reality to simulate warfare in safe, controlled environments to help veterans who are suffering from anxiety disorders because of the traumatic events.
For burn victims, pain is one of the hardest part. Doctors are using virtual reality to distract patients during procedures such as wound care or even physical therapy by overloading their senses and pain pathways in the brain. SnowWorld, a VR video game from the University of Washington, is a fine example of this.
The game lets patients throw snowballs at penguins while listening to Paul Simon, helping them distract. A study conducted by the US military in 2011 showed that for soldiers with burn injuries, SnowWorld worked better than morphine.
VR is also being user social cognition training for young adults with autism. A training programme created by professors at the University of Texas, puts kids with autism in situations such as virtual job interviews and uses brain imaging and brain wave monitoring to help them work on reading social cues and expressing socially acceptable behaviour.
Brain scans of kids who participated showed increased activity in areas of the brain tied to social understanding.
Patients who have lost a limb feel “phantom” limb pain, pain that appears to be in the missing limb. Such patients suffer from sharp, excruciating pain and are unable to relax.
Traditional treatments have included mirror therapy, where the patient would look at a mirror image from the good limb and the brain syncs with the movements of the real and phantom limbs. VR games could help in alleviating the phantom pain in a more efficient way by having patients complete tasks using a virtual limb, thereby helping them gain some control and learn how to relax the phantom limb.
Complex brain surgeries are planned in excruciating detail. Neurosurgeons at hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, plan their procedures with VR technology.
Wearing VR goggles, they can virtually navigate through three-dimensional models constructed from CT and MRI scans, and find, for example, the safest route to a hard-to-reach tumour. California-based neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Louis, who has been training on the Surgical Navigation Advanced Platform (SNAP), says that, “It’s a game changer. Kids playing video games have had this technology for 10 years. It’s amazing we only now get it in the operating room.”
VR Headset maker Fove, through its crowdfunding campaign, created the Eye Play the Piano app, which allows kids with physical disabilities to play the piano using the headset’s eye tracking technology. Of course, then comes the question that what will happen when people can virtually travel anywhere and do pretty much everything through a VR headset, would they ever go anywhere in real life and instead draw back into their personal, virtual Shangri-La.
However, for people who are unable to get out into the real world, be it the elderly or disabled, VR could boost their quality of life in situation where they’d otherwise be limited to a room or a bed.
—The writer is Chief Executive of Merlin Digital.
