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VR in Medicine
Thirty years have passed since researchers and experimenters began applying virtual reality to medicine. During this period, they have managed to prove that VR technology is not just a speculative futuristic concept, it is capable of solving real problems. And as a result, it will bring invaluable benefits to both doctors and their patients. In order not to speak in the abstract, it is necessary to analyze several cases of application of VR developments in the field of healthcare.
Alzheimers Disease Treatment
One startup, Wayback, has focused on Alzheimers disease and dementia. According to recent estimates, about 50 million people worldwide suffer from the disease. And that number could rise to 132 million by 2050 (Hoffman, 2004). Memory loss is the main problem associated with this disease. A person forgets the meaning of words, names of loved ones, important events and dates his memories are erased. It is a very complicated disease for which there is currently no cure. Englishman Dan Cole, whose father has Alzheimers, together with like-minded people created a series of films in virtual reality and called the project Wayback. For the first study, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 was recreated (Hoffman, 2004). A series of experiments showed that VR therapy, while not capable of eliminating Alzheimers disease, allows people to regain the skill of meaningful communication.
The Study and Treatment of the Heart
The heart is a complex three-dimensional organ, and it is still not fully understood by humans. That said, without a clear understanding of the course of surgery, patients experience additional and unnecessary stress. So days before they pull on surgical gloves and operate on a patients heart, doctors at Stanford Childrens Hospital Lucile Packard prepare them for the procedure by immersing them in virtual reality. As for student training: virtual hearts are now being used to train pediatric cardiologists at 22 medical centers around the world (Hoffman, 2004). According to the results of the study, it was found: those who were trained using the classical method, not using VR, showed the worst results in recognizing two dozen different cardiac abnormalities. This means that VR modeling will be increasingly integrated into medical centers in the future. However, in addition to better visualization and digestibility of information, the virtual heart model has another significant advantage it costs less than the plastic models used by cardiologists now.
Fighting Cancer
Several VR companies are successfully helping cancer patients. For example, Oncomfort, Start VR and KindVR have developed virtual reality applications that relieve the stress of patients undergoing chemotherapy. During the procedure, they are put on virtual reality goggles and offered a boat trip on the harbor, exploring the seabed, and interacting with koalas at the zoo. This distraction prevents patients from focusing on uncomfortable sensations. In turn, scientists from Cambridge gave hope that virtual reality will become a new weapon in the fight against cancer (Hoffman, 2004). This new way to study complex medical data allows them to examine each tumor cell in detail, determine exactly which ones are malignant, look at all the genetic differences, and ultimately look at the disease in a new way (Hoffman, 2004). Because tumors are stored in cyberspace rather than under the glass of a microscope, doctors around the world can study three-dimensional models without having to prepare their own specimens.
Conclusion
Although virtual reality is already used in medicine as an effective tool for the treatment and training of new specialists, the field is developing permanently. The most important and serious problems of public health were discussed above, but it should be emphasized that virtual reality is also used to deal with a number of other diseases. An obstacle to the widespread adoption of VR in the health sector will be the process of reclassifying VR equipment as a medical device rather than an entertainment device. This is one of the main factors in the field that needs to be regulated.
Reference
Hoffman, H.G. (2004). Virtual reality therapy. Scientific American, 291, 58-64.
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