Does VR have a place in healthcare delivery? What strategy postures should healthcare organizations take toward VR today?
The following is an interview with Eric Williams, co-creator of the Immersive Media Initiative in Ohio.
1. What current projects are you involved with that utilize virtual reality?
The Game Research and Immersive Design Lab at Ohio University is involved in a wide variety of VR projects in the healthcare environment. To name a few:
– We are working with Dr. Chris France to use VR to help people overcome their fear of donating blood. We believe our more immersive experience will enhance a donor’s willingness to give blood than traditional educational materials. provide better therapeutic results than televisual interventions of the past.
– We are working with clinical professor Ashley Crow and Dr. Petra Williams (from Northern Arizona University) to create a 360-degree video simulation library that will better prepare Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students for their clinical practice in the intensive care unit.
– We are working with Dr. Thanh Nguyen at Grant Medical Center to prepare a pilot training program using 360-video for medical residents starting their residency in their Level I trauma center.
2. What advantages do you see in conducting clinical training via virtual reality?
I’m trying out this new word: “Preality”. It’s PRE-Reality. I don’t think that VR should even think about replacing clinical training. What it does, I think, is provide an opportunity for the health care student to prepare for the reality they are about to experience. If you can stand unobtrusively in a trauma bay and simply watch four or five cases before you go in there for real, then you can see how the team functions, you can acclimatize yourself to the sights and sounds, you can learn where the equipment is (and where it moves).
Imagine how much time (and anxiety) a new resident or a new healthcare professional must expend simply acclimatizing to a new medical environment. But if they had a PREALITY experience through VR, then they will enter the REAL experience for the first time so much better prepared. And in a more calm and confident manner. A student could sit at home all weekend in preality mode. They could experience and re-experience the trauma cases until they felt comfortable. And with that, think of how much time (and effort) that save the attending, and the trauma team, because less hand-holding is now required. You can extrapolate this idea off into any sort of clinical training, not just residents in the ER. We’re talking about DPTs in the ICU, paramedics in the back of an helicopter, or even intake nurses assessing abuse symptoms in the ER waiting room.
3. Are there patient-facing use cases for VR?
The University of Washington Seattle and Harborview Burn Center has developed a VR experience for burn patients that immerses them in a winter wonderland to take their mind off of their injuries, and I think this gets to the center of patient-facing VR. By definition, Virtual Reality is creating a new reality – both visual and aural – and that is a powerful thing. Or can be. We need to study this more. But theoretically, we can use VR to enhance physical therapy by providing “real world” experiences. Instead of recommending that your patient go home and do twenty reps with their theraband tied to the foot of the bed, place them in VR where they are doing those twenty reps as part of an Olympiad competition. Not only is it more fun, but the PT can monitor the activity and adjust as needed, remotely.
At least two other areas that are ripe for exploration, I believe, are:
· Communicating with a patient’s family in a way that helps them to understand what their family member is going through. Carrie Shaw’s Chicago-based company Embodied Labs has developed the “We Are Alfred” VR experience which replicates the experience of a 75 year old patient who has hearing loss and cataracts. Many patients’ symptoms can be described, but they cannot be understood until they are experienced.
· Preparing people for the next stage in their life, after injury. Would it be beneficial for a new quadriplegic to “spend the day” experiencing the world through the eyes of someone with a similar injury, but who is five years post-injury? VR can do that. Or something as simple as demonstrating what the MRI machine is like.
We have to study the impact of such experiences, but I believe that providing an immersive example of a future event will be able to better prepare patients (and their families) for what is now a very scary, unknown future.
4. Are there any relevant investments that hospitals should be considering for 2017-2019?
I think the best investments that hospitals can make in the near future is to develop collaborations with forward thinking universities, cutting edge tech companies, and entrepreneurial digital game/design companies. This technology is moving so quickly that if a hospital invests in technology and new employees to ramp up, the tech will be outdated before they can utilize it. Instead, we need to be thinking about new ways to invest across disciplines so that the technology and game design companies are sharing their newest equipment and ideas with universities and hospitals who are able to best utilize and assess these tools as soon as they become available. That first hand, immediate assessment and feedback is invaluable to the tech and design companies.
Not everyone is that nimble, but for those that can cut through the bureaucracy – they will be the ones setting the new pace in healthcare. And the investment isn’t always in dollars, it’s in the time and commitment of the most forward-thinking and creative individuals. This is new new technology. We need to work together to invent what’s coming. The hospitals – the good ones – are aware and honest about where problems lie. They need to collaborate with (and trust) scholars and technical experts to help them image the solutions to these problems. And in return, the scholars and technical experts need to invest their time and energy (and trust) in the medical professionals to guide them in directions that no one has yet considered. That’s a big investment, but it will be worth it.
5. Outside of healthcare, how do you see VR most impacting our lives?
Everyone is talking about VR setting a new paradigm for entertainment, but I don’t see it as that way. I see VR (especially 360-degree video) as more of tool to develop new forms of awareness. I do a lot of hiking in the Grand Canyon – days and days, miles and miles away from people. Not everyone can do that. And describing it is impossible. But with VR, I can take you there. You can become personally aware of what a blood red sunset looks like from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. You can sit in on a tribal meeting in the rain forests of Brazil. You can relive your grandfather’s 100th birthday party. You can watch a wolf pack feed. These things make us more aware, not necessarily more entertained.
Eric R. Williams, MFA
Co-creator of the Immersive Media Initiative
Game Research and Immersive Design Lab
Director, MFA in Communication Media Arts
Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University
Connect with Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williae2/
Stay informed this year:
Subscribe to our newsletter with the quick “Follow Medibeat” form in the menu.
Download the free Medibeat iOS app and swipe right to start reading articles from over 30 healthcare news sources.