Healthcare is VR’s killer app
Virtual Reality has garnered a lot of hype over the last couple years as the immersive experience it can provide is truly amazing. This has led to a number of predictions around the growth of VR, most of which has been focused on the consumer side.
However, as with most new platforms, use cases that weren’t originally predicted often times become the most powerful and only much later become obvious. Edison had a whole list of uses for the phonograph when he invented it, but listening to music wasn’t one of them. When Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone, he named only three use cases: listening to downloaded music, making calls, and browsing the web. Not only has the smartphone created whole new industries that have nothing to do with these initial use cases, but even those initial three have changed dramatically since then. More and more consumers are using streaming services to listen to music, apps are much better than a mobile web browser, and making calls is one of the least used communication methods on the smartphone.
I believe the same thing will happen with VR. Gaming has been the consensus choice to become the first mainstream use case. Others include watching sporting events, training and education, virtual travel, and immersive entertainment. These very well might become widely adopted uses of VR technology in time. However, I think there is one area that has been drastically overlooked but will have the largest and most immediate impact; Healthcare.
Healthcare is VR’s first killer app. Consumer adoption of VR has been moderate at best but healthcare adoption is accelerating. More and more hospitals and doctors are beginning to use VR to treat patients. An increasing number of healthcare applications are being experimented with. An ever-growing amount of research continues to validate the benefits VR is providing.
Don’t believe me? VR has already proven to help phobia patients get over their worst fears through exposure therapy. PTSD sufferers are using VR to help them understand and come to terms with their memories. Immersive meditation content and VR games help patients relax, control their breathing, and reinforce a positive attitude. VR is being used to treat pain and in some instances, has been more effective then morphine. Other places VR is being experimented with includes brain damage evaluation and rehabilitation, social training for those with autism, and helping disabled individuals regain body functions. Soon, seamless integration between VR, biometric feedback data, and AI will mean an individual’s experience in virtual reality will be customized in real time thereby improving the effectiveness of the treatments. In the future, VR will be in every hospital and become a standard treatment for a variety of things including these listed above and probably many more that haven’t yet been thought of.
And then there is the opioid epidemic we as a nation are facing. In 2016, over 64,000 people died from opioid overdose — more drug overdose deaths than any other period in US history including past heroin, crack, and meth epidemics. In the US, physicians write enough prescriptions for opioid painkillers to give a bottle of pills to every adult in the country.
Now state governments have taken notice and have started to restrict their use including limiting how long opioid painkillers can be prescribed. Beginning next year, CVS is limiting opioid prescriptions to 7 days and insurance giant Cigna will no longer cover most OxyContin prescriptions. Doctors themselves are becoming warier of continuously prescribing opioids due to the potential associated liabilities. However, this still leaves the 100 million plus US adults that suffer from chronic pain without a safe, legal way to manage their pain.
VR very well may be the safe, legal way for these patients to manage their chronic pain. Earlier this year, I wrote about why we invested in AppliedVR and since that time, I have become even more convinced of the impact VR will have in healthcare. There was a great article in Wired last week about Cedars Sinai and other hospitals adopting VR for pain management. I don’t think VR will replace opioids completely, but I do believe it’s an effective, safer alternative that can drastically lower the use of opioids. Especially for patients with chronic pain that need help over an extended period of time. Reducing the need to take pills for no more than a couple days reduces the chances they will become addicted and VR has proven it can help do exactly that. It is also affordable for patients to use VR at home to manage pain and will likely become even more affordable over time as hardware prices decline and insurance companies include VR in their reimbursements.
Most of VR’s hype has centered on consumer adoption, but based on how the market has evolved in the past 18 months, VR’s value in healthcare will be realized far before any consumer application’s value. VR will have a bigger and more immediate impact in healthcare then gaming or any other consumer application. Doctors will prescribe VR therapy as often as they prescribe antibiotics today. People will not only use VR in hospitals and doctor’s offices, but will regularly do treatments at home. Finally, VR will be the single greatest reason for the decline in opioid use in coming years. I continue to be excited about the potential of VR because I believe it has found its killer app.
