Ethical

Technology has opened opportunities to provide healthcare services via means other than traditional personal visits between healthcare professionals and patients, such as VR, generally defined as a computer-generated 3D world accessed via a head-mounted display and commonly used in devices such as computers, tablets, or smartphones. VR presents a transformative potential in healthcare, offering enhanced access to healthcare services and alternative therapeutic options. However, its integration also raises ethical, legal, and social implications. These include the doctor-patient relationship, quality of care and safety, fairness, and confidentiality (Rudschies & Schneider, 2024). The legal and ethical implications of VR technologies in healthcare include the issue of registration, licensing, and practice. Patients from different places may use VR, which may have different legal frameworks and whether doctors need to be licensed to offer such services. Also, these types of technology in the healthcare process are sensitive personal and medical data, and one of the most important legal implications is safeguarding privacy, confidentiality, and data protection. Other ethical concerns are the misuse of VR with patients who are at risk or contribute to mental health risks such as anxiety, depression, detachment from the environment/reality, and cybersickness. Another concern is that language can potentially cause the exclusion of certain social groups because the technology and specific languages might not be able to understand and interact with some groups of people with speaking disabilities (Rudschies & Schneider, 2024). Another implication is that VR applications in the healthcare domain may have social implications, such as healthcare professionals’ competencies and information technology (IT) skills needing to expand and consistently be updated based on VR technology updates. This can What Role Does Virtual Reality Play in Healthcare also be an issue for patients as they may not know how to use VR tools/technology or be limited in their physical abilities to operate them. Also, patients should be given a choice over whether and how they want to participate in these types of VR services. First, the patient should be provided transparency about the systems and clear information about a system’s intentions, purpose, scope of use, and limitations, including how data is used, which could be helpful for patients making an informed decision. Also, they should have the right and access to report concerns about the safety or quality of the VR service, and healthcare professionals should have tools in place to resolve any problems or even discontinue using the VR. Another social implication is barriers to using VR in healthcare for patients who lack access to the required technology or the internet, which may increase the inequality between those well-skilled in using digital technologies and those who are not (Rudschies & Schneider, 2024). While there seem to be many concerns with regard to legal, ethical, social, and security aspects of VR, the current use appears to include more use of these technologies, which provides the outlook that in the future, this will only expand into the Healthcare environment and used as a standard practice with continues learning upkeep.