Virtual Reality Meets Medicine
The medical community has been making constant strides in advancing their technology and helping patients in more efficient ways. An example of the advancing technology in medicine would be with the integration of robotics, and how they have revolutionized surgical procedures to be wildly more precise and effective. So when is virtual reality going to take a dive into the medical world? More importantly, what benefits could it offer patients? The answer could be in the very near future!
What’s Working Now?
Virtual Reality is still in it’s beginning stages and with that being said, there is much room for improvement. Every year we make more discoveries on how to make the current virtual environments more immersive, but right now we are limited to visual headsets and controllers that do a good job at providing a decent “out of this world” experience, however it is still far from perfect. Virtual reality is being used in medical practices today by practitioners for certain ailments and has shown to be effective at treating them nevertheless, it is still not yet known what the full potential of virtual reality can provide for the world of medicine, since virtual reality still needs to evolve itself.
Virtual reality is already being used to help with:
- Autism
- Memory Loss
- Chronic Pain
- Surgeries
- Mental Health
Taking Surgery To The Next Level
Surgery is always a nerve racking thing to think about, being unconscious while trusting other people to cut you open and keep you alive while doing so. Doctors now are using virtual reality technology to plan out their surgeries before hand, which allows us to feel a little more confident that they will already know what to be looking for when we go under the anesthesia. “Prior to any operation, surgeons need to obtain the most precise images possible on the part of the body undergoing surgery. For instance, The University of Basel has developed a technology that employs computed tomography to generate three-dimensional images in real time to use in a virtual space altogether” (2018). Knowing what to look for before the surgery takes place is crucial, which is why before new advancements, X-rays would most commonly be used to diagnose people internally. The University of Basel understood this which is why they actually developed a real world virtual space that generates images of the patients organs to help prepare doctors for their surgeries.
Treating Memory Loss
Alzheimer’s has touched many lives over the course of time with us still not being able to find a cure or a way to reverse its terrible effects. However, this one is interesting as we are not technically using virtual worlds to combat memory loss, since that would prove to be quite difficult. Instead we are using our virtual reality headsets as sensors to try and help us better understand the brain and pinpoint what is causing memory problems. As the newgenapps.com article states “They are trying to understand what happens to the brain when new information is passed on to it. They also use a conjunction of brain implants and VR tasks for an immersive real-world experience and did also capture brain signals and oscillations for a clear idea” (2018). In other words, they are measuring brain waves when the people wearing the headsets become exposed to something new in their virtual environment in order to learn more about how the brain works to different stimulus.
The medical community is constantly making advances to help people and keep us alive longer. It is fascinating to see all the new technology coming out and how it could possibly be helping to save lives. Especially something that was meant for video games like virtual reality. Perhaps in the near future there will be more medical based applications and the VR headsets will be more improved and adapted to help the patients who wear them
Cited:
5 Incredible Uses of Virtual Reality in Medicine. (2018, May 18). Retrieved March 3, 2019, from https://www.newgenapps.com/blog/5-incredible-uses-of-virtual-reality-in-medicine
