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Team Thoughts
The use of interactive, computer-generated technology in medicine, known as therapeutic virtual reality (VR), is rapidly gaining traction. Your doctor can already prescribe a virtual reality visit to relieve pain or anxiety or to explain a complex medical procedure or condition in some hospitals and clinics.
The following is how it works: Your outside environment evaporates when you put on a motion-sensing VR headset (and sometimes portable controllers). It’s replaced by a 360-degree virtual world that you can enter, walk about in, and engage with quickly and totally.
You might find yourself beneath the sea, surrounded by dolphins, if you need a break from pain or worry. You can see the light streaming through the water’s surface as you float along. Dolphins can be seen swimming around and below you, if you look down. The echo of the underwater environment can be heard, as well as the sounds of the large beasts that surround you. The sense is genuine, and your brain interprets it as such. It is because of this skill that VR has such therapeutic promise.
For decades, doctors have researched virtual reality for pain relief and other medical applications. Hardware is now cheaper, smaller, faster, more reliable, and easier to operate thanks to technological advancements. This suggests that therapeutic VR will become increasingly available.
Technology and hardware evolve at such a rapid pace and improve so substantially in such a short period of time that what we use today will appear archaic and antiquated in just a few years.
Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a new type of therapy developed by medical VR that helps patients work through mental health concerns by allowing them to address stressors and triggers in a safe setting. It allows VR users to talk more openly about their experience with therapists, and medical professionals can assist them in working through the trauma by analyzing and describing unique triggers. Because it is impossible to duplicate battle events for exposure treatment, this offers huge potential to transform therapy for veterans. VRET may create lifelike surroundings for veterans and therapists, including odors that trigger memories. BraveMind, a VRET solution developed at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, takes this method.
Patients may be confined to a bed following major surgery or an accident, posing issues for their emotional well-being as well as physical suffering, resulting in much shorter typical recovery durations. It can also aid with chronic pain and confinement issues by providing an easily accessible escape that requires little movement. To get out of the bed, the patient may put on a virtual reality headset and do guided breathing exercises in a relaxing, remote setting.
Medical VR, in addition to standard rehabilitation, can help people overcome their addictions. Substance addiction frequently begins as a coping mechanism for a person’s real-world issues, and over time, factors in a person’s life and environment can become deadly triggers. Separating the person from the triggers is one of the most difficult aspects of recovery, which can be difficult for those with full-time jobs, children, underprivileged backgrounds, or regions without sufficient rehabilitation facilities.
Medical VR is more accessible and provides a safe environment in which patients can escape their triggers, remain anonymous, and receive guided assistance.
Virtual reality is quickly gaining traction as an excellent rehabilitation tool that provides patients with a more delightful experience. VR has a lot of potential, from facilitating motor learning for gait rehabilitation to assisting patients in their recovery after brain damage. There are currently active studies employing this technology to reduce memory loss, delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and manage people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome.
The next stage is to make medical VR more accessible to a wider audience as virtual reality gets more sophisticated, intuitive, lifelike, and economical.
