A Quick Glimpse of The Role of Virtual Reality in Healthcare
Medical professionals and patients can engage with simulated settings designed for medical education, pain treatment, or rehabilitation, thanks to virtual reality healthcare solutions. The future of healthcare driven by virtual reality was projected to reach $336.9 million in 2020. By 2024, it is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 30.7% on average, reaching $2.2 billion.
Have you ever considered being relieved from mental pain and anxiety by being immersed in a VR simulation? Yes! That is a possible reality in today’s time. VR can take you to an ultimate realistic environment with a soothing audio simulation, which could put your mind at ease.
The future of Healthcare with virtual reality has some exciting potential. It has sparked the imaginations of clinical researchers and actual medical professionals in addition to science fiction readers. Even though the technology is still in its infancy, there are more compelling examples of how VR is improving both the lives of patients and the work of doctors.
Top VR Tools That Aid Healthcare To Its Best
Virtual reality (VR) can be utilized to quickly acquire important data, facilitating any interventions before treatments are carried out. These tools for VR in healthcare creation include:
- Head-mounted Display: The display lenses and headphones of HMD solutions like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR, or Google Cardboard are coupled to a head strap placed around the user’s head. A fascinating virtual reality immersion using head-mounted displays places objects right in front of the user.
- Smart Glasses: Smart glasses, which are part of a new generation of smart technologies, are used in healthcare to help clinicians perform the right diagnostic tests and medical treatments, hence improving clinical outcomes. For example, Google Glass is a set of glasses that, among other things, are worn during operations to record videos and visualize data.
- Haptic Gloves: To facilitate natural contact with virtual surroundings, special gloves have been created. Despite being among the newest VR innovations, they already have the potential to transform the healthcare sector. The Haptic gloves, which can replicate surgical simulations, can enhance learning by making it more engaging and efficient.
5 Major Applications of VR in Healthcare
Medical Training
In order to become certified, young doctors and future practitioners must put their skills to the test. They can learn the fundamentals and specifics of many operations through high-quality VR training. A learner can be transported into a human body using technology to get a better view of and practice in inaccessible locations. VR is therefore particularly helpful for developing training surgery simulations.
Pain Management
VR is a powerful tool for pain management as well. After determining which nerves are causing the pain, the appropriate course of action is taken. A sequence of therapies for the muscles, nerves, or drugs may be used in more complicated procedures. In the meantime, VR shows to have healing properties that allow reducing the use of medication, making it a valuable complement to other approaches.
Mental Health & Psychological Therapy
Mental health care is another application of virtual reality in medicine. Virtual reality exposure therapy is successful in treating PTSD behaviorally. Panic, nightmares, delusions, and impaired perception are some of the distinctive signs of PTSD. VR is seen to be a helpful addition to exposure-based therapy as it tends to lessen or prevent these symptoms.
Virtual Reality for children
Virtual Reality can help children with pain management by diverting their attention from medical procedures. This would lead to lesser pain and sustained comfort throughout their medical treatment. Hence, this also saves them from taking any high-dose painkillers or shelling out big bucks on the treatment.
Dentistry
Dental patients and professionals can benefit from virtual reality in several ways. Patients who put on VR headsets rather than safety glasses can detach from the surgery itself and unwind. On the contrary hand, new VR training programs for dentistry professionals and students are developed using VR.
Future of Healthcare with VR
Virtual reality has a promising future in the medical field. It has already shown effectiveness in treating postpartum depression and anxiety and stroke patients’ recovery. Virtual reality has a great deal of potential for helping individuals deal with their ailments or injuries, even though there are a lot of unsolved concerns regarding how to utilize it successfully.
VR in healthcare is getting more flexible and will soon be simple to access as the internet becomes more and more ingrained in people’s day-to-day lives. When used properly, virtual environments can be beneficial additions to the end-to-end assistance provided to healthcare practitioners. And, for this, you will need to collaborate with an ideal AR/VR App Development Agency that could assist you with your specific healthcare project.
Niraj Jagwani is an engineer who has co-founded a number of businesses in the domain of software development services. He has successfully helped clients across industries increase revenues, optimize processes, and achieve new milestones. He is a passionate writer and loves to exchange ideas.
