• VR can be used to efficiently educate clinicians by providing knowledge or by developing technical skills based on evidence-based practices and procedures. For example, VR can be used to:

  • • • Providing personalized and precise learning for gross and fine motor skills is highly useful in surgical subspecialties. 

      • Facilitating the cognitive skills necessary for medical decision-making and effective communication 

      • Clinician education from student to provider in the form of Anatomy education where VR provides for lower costs and increases accessibility for anatomical learning. 

      • It is significantly better at increasing motivation and spatial understanding of anatomical structures cover the traditional books and videos.

• Engage is a VR application that provides an excellent collaborative learning experience. It enables interactive learning with the ability to import 3D anatomical structures to help better visualize and understand the structures.

• Doctors and other health care individuals can use VR to render and view medical scan data in VR to better understand the Spatial volumetric data. 

• They may interact with the images and scans and alter them to enable viewing from a variety of angles compared to the traditional 3-axis view currently in use.

• Tools like Paraview and Slicer 3D can be used to view these medical data in VR

• Doctors-in-training can access parts one cannot usually reach

• Full CGI reconstruction of human body - medical students normally interact only with cadavers, which do not necessarily give them an accurate representation of how a patient will react when alive

• Medical Realities: Company that films surgeries in 4K 360˚ video and then combines that with CGI to create an immersive environment

• Can switch between 3D and real CT views 

• VR played a vital role in the successful separation of conjoined twins at Masonic Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis:

  • Team of doctors used VR to look at organs more closely and detect any potential pitfalls

  • Can walk through the surgery so as to avoid any surprises

• Simulations of scenarios in which psychological difficulties appear

  • Target triggers without having to actually travel to a different locations

• Can create simulations of scenarios that are not easy to recreate in environments like therapy, such as being on a plane or on top of a cliff

• Therapist can focus on patients response

• Simulations can be categorized according to intensity/difficulty

• Simulations can be repeated

• Can isolate triggers in a much more controlled approach

• Shown to reduce anxiety in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy

VR Appliactions:

• Distraction for patients undergoing physical therapy

  • Reduces pain level 

• Physical therapy often last several months - VR allows for patients to feel some variation when put in different simulated environments

• Helps keep patients focused during treatment that is long and emotionally-taxing

• VR potentially more effective than cognitive tests in detecting early Alzheimer's

• University of Cambridge researchers have trialled a VR navigation test on patients in risk of developing dementia

  • Successful completion of task requires entorhinal cortex

  •  All patients with mild cognitive impairment preformed worse on the task

  • Task proved to be better at differentiating between low-risk and high-risk patients

• VR can stop the brain from processing pain

• Shortens patient's time in hospital, reduces treatment cost

• Some patients do not react well to anesthesia 

  • VR can be used to mitigate pain during minimally invasive surgeries

• VR has helped reduce pain for burn patients

  • "SnowWorld" made specifically for burn patients, which has reduced pain by up to 50%.