It’s no surprise, then, that the healthcare industry is looking for ways to hitch its wagon to VR.
Thanks to the ubiquity of health trackers, fitness watchers, and online access to health care professionals, accessibility of real-time data regarding our health comes easily. More than 50 percent of U.S. households with broadband use online health tools to communicate with their doctor, access personal health data or fill prescriptions and it’s safe to assume that these numbers will continue to rise.
On a day-to-day basis, we know how well we sleep, how many calories we’re consuming, and how many total minutes we’re active. Corporate wellness programs engage end users by awarding points and other rewards for tracking data like medication consistency, keeping doctor visits and logging activity. We are in a data goldmine! We see it, grab it and roll around in it. But, if you stare at it long enough, excitement dwindles. How are we going to get all of this gold out of the mine, and what are we going to do with it?
In the near term, VR can provide us immediate next steps as to how we should interact with the data, lengthen our attention spans and help us interpret what we’re seeing.
It provides immediate solutions.
Many VR health app environments provide users with an overall picture of health, similar to data provided by fitness-tracker dashboards. After drilling down into your data and identifying fluctuations like stress levels or weight gain, you can use VR to provide an immediate solution to what ails you. Stress level elevated? Immerse yourself in relaxing, engaging and meditative VR content paired with a neurostimulation device like the Kortex™ by Fisher Wallace Labs. This device stimulates the brain to produce serotonin and melatonin while lowering cortisol, and when used with a virtual reality headset like the VR One Plus, can help users manage stress and maintain regular sleep patterns.
It is interactive.
VR goes beyond the numbers and gives our shortened attention spans something new and exciting on which to focus. As interesting and telling as fitness tracker data may initially be, those charts and graphs are simply a presentation of data. Virtual reality can synthesize this data into a personal gaming environment with measurable goals that are custom-tailored and adapted to what you want to accomplish. We’ve already seen the impact that setting personal goals inherently has on competitive nature – even when only competing with ourselves. A review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which examined 26 studies involving more than 2,700 participants, found that overall, those using pedometers increased their physical activity by 26.9 percent over baseline. Add in a virtual reality gaming dimension, and you’ve just amped up the intensity (and fun) tenfold.
It taps into the emotional.
Some people, despite the numbers moving in the right direction on the dashboard, lack the self-esteem to appreciate their progress. New avatar technologies are being developed, where you see a virtual version of yourself – a virtual “you” that reflects how your body is changing based on weight lost, muscle gained and stress decreasing. It allows you to see what others see, and you can simulate yourself doing positive, healthy activities (playing with puppies, walking on the beach, biking through Florence) to keep you emotionally on the right track.
While there has been significant chatter about how VR can be incorporated into the healthcare environment – for training, patient care and rehabilitation – there are also very personal applications to a VR world that can significantly impact our health. The next three years will bring an onslaught of new applications that allow us to see our virtual selves – are you ready to look in the virtual mirror?
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About Dave Hodgson
Dave Hodgson is North America sales and distribution director for Zeiss Multimedia Devices, a group within the consumer products division of Zeiss, makers of camera lens, binoculars and scopes. Multimedia devices include the Zeiss VR One headset and future wearable devices with specialized lenses.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker’s Hospital Review/Becker’s Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
