How Virtual Reality is Impacting the Healthcare Industry

June 7, 2019
Posted by: Jessica
Category: virtual reality

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Virtual Reality is among the latest trends of this tech-savvy era. Even though the technology has been in the picture for more than half a decade, it is still in an evolving stage. During the initial days, virtual reality was only limited to the gaming and entertainment sectors. However, with time and introduction of new technologies, VR has successfully made its way to several other industries as well and healthcare is one of them.

The healthcare industry can benefit from virtual reality in many ways, starting from performing precise surgeries to training future doctors through interactive sessions. In fact, many medical experts believe that virtual reality has huge potential in the healthcare industry.

The right implementation of technology can advance the way medical professionals used to perform surgeries. So, in this blog post, we are going to share a list of some of the benefits of virtual reality in the healthcare industry. These benefits will help you understand how virtual reality is going to impact the healthcare industry in the coming years. So, without any further ado, let’s start the list.

Note: The most efficient way to implement Virtual Reality (VR) in the healthcare industry is to develop a VR based mobile app which interacts with the VR headset. This way it would become easier for the medical experts to dive into the virtual world. In such a scenario, one should reach out to developers who offer virtual reality app services. These developers will build a VR based app which can be used to simulate a virtual scenario.

Medical Training

Today the biggest challenge in the healthcare industry is to train young trainees. Performing surgeries is an extremely delicate task and if the students aren’t trained properly, someone’s life is going to be at risk. This is the reason why training of medical students is always conducted with precision.

However, as of the current training standards, the students learn on cadavers. Not only corpses cannot replicate the exact functioning of an alive body, but they also make it difficult to understand the training methods.

This is when virtual reality comes into the picture. Virtual Realit allows a person to virtually enter the human body and examine each organ closely. This makes the entire training session more effective and it becomes easier for the students to understand the different surgical procedures.

With virtual reality, we can even combine the 360-degree videos (captured during the surgery) with special CGI effects to provide students with more interactive educational stuff.

The truth is VR has the potential to make the training sessions more interactive and impactful. However, there are still many challenges which need to be countered to implement virtual reality in the training session.

The first and foremost challenge we are most likely to experience is the availability of VR headsets in the medical institutes. Though there are many pocket-friendly VR headsets, they are not as advanced as high-end headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

To make the best out of the VR session, the students need high-end VR headsets, which are too expensive. However, virtual reality has several benefits as well when it comes to developing training sessions for medical students.

The biggest advantage of bringing VR into the training sessions is that trainers can even entertain a group of 10-20 students at a single point in time. This is something which is not possible with the traditional training methods.

Furthermore, with a VR based mobile app, it becomes easier for the students to repeat the procedures they have learned during their training.

Treatments

Virtual Reality can also enhance accuracy during the surgery itself. As of now, the surgeries are being performed manually. Even though the success rates are extremely high, there’s still a huge scope for blunders.

However, with virtual reality, it becomes much easier to perform critical surgeries. Robotic surgery is the method which is getting popular these days. Many medical professionals have started to perform robotic surgeries to improve accuracy.

In such a scenario, the doctors virtually control the robotic arm through a virtual headset, which eventually leads to increased success rate and precision. Although critical surgeries are yet to be experimented using VR technology, there are medical procedures which can be easily performed using a VR headset.

Virtual Reality can also be used to educate patients. Before beginning with the surgery, the patient can be taken through a virtual simulation to help him understand the entire surgical process. As a result, the patient would feel less nervous.

Moreover, psychiatrists can also use virtual reality to treat their patient. With VR headsets, the patients can be taken to any simulated world to understand their mental health. There are many scenarios when psychiatrists need to create hypothetical situations for their patients such as flying.

With virtual reality, the patients can actually experience these hypothetical situations. In the psychology field, VR has a huge potential and psychiatrists can use it to improve the recovery process of their patients.

VR’s capabilities to speed up the recovery is not only limited to mental health but several other conditions as well. While as surprising as it may sound, virtual reality has proven to improve the recovery time of patients undergoing physical therapy.

Studies have shown that with a virtual simulation patients can be distracted during their physical therapy treatment. As a result, the patients would experience less pain and will recover quickly at the same time.

Awareness

There’s no arguing the fact that the majority of people have no idea about a wide range of medical conditions. With virtual reality, patients can be made aware of these medical conditions and can also be taught effective methods to fight them.

When it comes to awareness, VR has several benefits. Patients can be taught about a certain medical condition in detail, along with the methods which can be used to get rid of them.

This is one of the biggest advantages of virtual reality in the healthcare industry. Spreading awareness among people is the most efficient way to ensure that everyone can have a healthy future.

Marketing

Virtual Reality has already been used as an effective marketing tool in several industries. Fortunately, same is the case for the medical industries. In the healthcare industry, many products are being launched on a daily basis.

Even though these products have several advantages, most of them are never bought, due to poor marketing. With virtual reality, however, these products can be promoted more precisely.

One can design a VR-based marketing video to show the advantages of the product in detail. Using virtual reality for marketing is a more interactive method than traditional marketing methods.

What is The Future of Virtual Reality in the Health Care Industry?

Now, that you know some of the applications of virtual reality in the healthcare industry, let’s understand what future holds for the technology. As you might already know, we hardly see any practical implementation of VR in the healthcare industry.

Despite having endless possibilities, experts in the medical industry hesitate to implement Virtual Reality. This is due to many reasons, less awareness being the most common one.

Even the professionals sitting at the top positions of the healthcare industry either have minimal or zero knowledge about virtual reality. In fact, they don’t even know what virtual reality is, let alone implementing it to perform a surgery.

As a result, there is very little demand for technology among medical experts. This is one of the biggest challenges for virtual reality in the healthcare industry.

How Virtual Reality can be Implemented in the Healthcare Industry

As we mentioned earlier, the implementation of Virtual Reality in the healthcare industry can be done by developing a VR based mobile app. The app will allow the students and medical professionals to dive into a virtual scenario, be it during the training session or at the time of surgery itself.