Virtual Reality and Healthcare
So — I started working with a startup near my university, and I am pretty excited. Serendipitously, I uploaded my resume on a website and got a response from them pretty quick. No need for the those career fairs!
Things are in full-swing, and it feels good to be working with a company on a real project that should have some fruitful outcomes. Though I’m part time, I definitely feel apart of their team.
That said, I am taking a deep-dive into another field that I have no idea about. Virtual reality, and putting cognitive data science and machine learning in the mix.
These two field are burgeoning individually, and when you think of the implications of both combined — the possibilities, yet again, seem limitless. That’s the beauty of technology, that with each new tool that emerges, there are that many more combinations (or permutations? or both?) that can allow for interesting methods for solving problems.
I want to highlight some early learnings as I research more of these areas
Virtual Reality
Before this gig, I didn’t read much about virtual and augmented reality. I found the idea scary. I mean, we humans don’t even really know how to live our lives in the real-world, why should we go to an artificial one? It seemed like running away.
There is more to it than that, and I realized that I was very biased. There is a growing amount of research in the healthcare field that activities within augmented or virtual worlds can improve therapy outcomes when compared to traditional methods.
It’s all about improving the human condition, and making sure that the patients do not feel as if they are sickly and have to wait in a dreary hospital to get better. There are methods to move beyond the physical setting and environment. The virtual world allows for researchers and physicians to put their patients in a controlled environment to monitor activity and progress.
Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely downsides to the technology. One of which is motion sickness — something I attest to after a 10 second roller-coaster ride in a virtual world. Jokes aside, it is imperative to make technology that improves and does not hinder. This is one of the many kinks that need to be worked out.
Now add in sensors
As stated before, more control is given to the creators of this virtual world. More control through sensors. And sensors mean data. Lots and lots of it.
There are so many sensors that can be added on top of the body. Motion, speech, pressure, temperature — whatever you want to be measured can probably measured with a good degree of accuracy.
Now on top of this, you can add the interaction details from the virtual environment. With all of this information, it can easily become cognitive overload for one person or team to process. However, with techniques from academia and some industry leaders, there are methods to dissect truly clear pieces of information from all of these signals.
Using accelerometer data, you could figure out the heartbeat of a patient. Using gyroscope data, you could figure out respiration. With the EEG, you could attempt to figure out mood, stress levels, etc. This is just scratching the surface, but that’s where our team is at today.
These data will feed into different algorithms and models to assess and predict future states of the patient.
Get excited for the future guys and gals. The more health information we can gather about ourselves, our friends and our family, the more insight we will have that can nudge us to live healthier, more productive lives. The final trick is to make these treatments or knowledge personalized. That is where we are headed, just give it some time.
Thanks for reading.
