Virtual Reality is being heralded as a major future disruptive technology across a wide array of industries. But one area already seeing interesting and practical use cases is healthcare. Doctors, researchers, and patients alike are donning VR headsets, and the results are impressive. With VR easier to create than ever — particularly with web-based drag-and-drop platforms like InstaVR — it’s no surprise that there’s such interest in the technology. Below we look at three major use cases for VR in healthcare:  training, research, and patient care.

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VR for Healthcare Training

We’ve written extensively about the benefits of using Virtual Reality for training new or existing employees. Simulating reality, you can place healthcare employees in high stakes situations, without horrible repercussions if errors are made. This type of immersive, visual learning is valuable. It transcends traditional text-based education, giving future employees an unparalleled sensory feel of being in a hospital or an emergency situation.

One area not often discussed is the difficulty in being placed in an unfamiliar situation. As we talked about in our article for VentureBeat, volunteers for the Starlight Foundation in Australia will soon be able to become familiarized with their new roles via the Oculus Rift. There’s nothing quite as emotional as being in a hospital room with a sick adolescent, but VR helps prepare volunteers as much as possible for the sensation.

A final aspect often overlooked is the cost-savings of using VR for healthcare training. With InstaVR, you can create unlimited apps for a low monthly subscription fee. So if you have 500 new nurses you need to train each year, as demand for healthcare workers grow, you can self-distribute iOS, Android, or WebVR training experiences. This saves time, money, and energy, as trainers don’t need to go to each individual healthcare location for initial training sessions.

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VR for Healthcare Research

Research is a key driver in healthcare technology. VR applications allow for user feedback in simulated situations, without having to physically transport people. You can gather feedback in as close to a real world situation as possible.

For instance, one InstaVR client is using our platform to look at the effects of VR smoking cessation videos. As VR is known to elicit empathy, the theory goes that watching the adverse effects of smoking through VR may discourage younger people from taking up smoking to begin with. But how do you measure which VR video is the most successful? By using actual data — or in the case of VR, visual heatmaps that show where users are looking within the videos. These heatmaps show engagement levels, which give more accurate data as to which videos actually captured user attention, potentially changing their views on the unhealthy practice.

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VR for Patient Care

A VR game helped a man lose 50 pounds through exercise. VR has also been proven to combat chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. Even physical therapists are having patients don VR headsets, for post-stroke rehabilitation.

The one constant across all of these areas is taking an existing condition — obesity, mental illness, stroke — and improving the patient response through immersive visual and auditory stimuli. By being taken mentally out of the hospital or bedroom, and being placed in a more conducive environment, the patient can better respond to treatment. Gamification also plays a major role, as patients have interaction with the 360 environment.

The great thing about the modern VR world is doctors don’t also need to be engineers to create the technology. They just need to have a vision for outcome, and then access to 360 media, to create VR applications. InstaVR does the rest with a drag-and-drop, easy-to-use platform that speeds up the VR app creation process.

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Conclusion

Healthcare technology is a huge industry that is rapidly undergoing change. Virtual Reality is one of the most exciting technologies changing the way doctors approach training, research, and patient care. For a doctor with an idea on how immersive 360 can change their workflow, InstaVR provides an easy and affordable solution for VR app creation.

The app creation cycle can be reduced from weeks or months, down to days with web-based VR authoring. This allows healthcare workers to focus on more critical occupational needs. If you’re in the healthcare industry, surely you’re seeing more and more VR being used around you. Don’t be afraid to try it yourself, not just as a consumer, but as a creator.

If you have any questions on InstaVR for Healthcare, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Head of Sales, Andrew Woodberry, andrew at instavr.co or +1 925-708-3928.