Current Use

How is VR currently used and impacting healthcare? VR is versatile and can assist doctors in delivering clinical services, not only in the hospital setting but can expand to provide services within a patient's home and other environments. This enables patients, including people in socioeconomically vulnerable communities and people who are elderly or have disabilities, to access needed healthcare services when in person is difficult; this has a practical impact on patients to complete treatment and monitoring regimens. VR is used in a number of treatment domains to treat patients, such as pediatric diagnostics and treatments, pain management, mental health, and telemedicine, to name a few (Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Augmented reality, and virtual reality in medical devices, n.d.) Also, currently, VR is used in healthcare for surgical planning and training, allowing surgeons to practice procedures using detailed 3D simulations of patient anatomy. VR is being used in mental health treatments, such as exposure therapy for PTSD, by creating controlled environments to help patients confront and manage their fears (Mairi Therese Deighan et al., 2024). Some benefits of VR include increased access to necessary health care, improved healthcare professionals' ability to prepare for certain treatments and streamlined diagnoses. Some security concerns involve cybersecurity risks and privacy risks.