As the healthcare industry strives to escape the Covid crisis, we are rapidly turning to new solutions to deal with the unprecedented influx of patients.In order to manage the entrance, the parking lot is becoming a nursing unit, and the traditional waiting room is Remaking Or be completely discarded.
But there is an experimental solution that is rarely tried, although its effectiveness in relieving stress and discomfort has been proven time and time again: virtual reality.
To be sure, VR has been accepted by the surgical department of the industry and effectively used it for training simulations. There are also very promising use cases that can alleviate the pain of burn patients. But I’m referring to the palliative care that even consumer VR devices such as Facebook’s Quest (now renamed Meta) can provide.
There are dozens of simple but fascinating immersive apps in the Quest App Store (many are very low cost if not free), and they can be very valuable for a variety of healthcare patients: easy-to-play games can alleviate Boring, immersive environments can reduce stress or chronic pain, create a multiplayer world with a sense of social connection, and so on. Unlike standard video games, most non-technical patients can easily get started: instead of learning a confusing set of gamepad buttons, they usually just need to move their hands and look around. As for the settings, any skilled medical staff can sterilize the equipment and set up the experience for the patient within a few minutes.
I have discussed this topic with many healthcare professionals, but their answers are almost always in the order of “sounds promising-send us some research literature”.
Part of the problem here is the scientific way of thinking in the medical field, which requires a large number of clinical trials before considering its adoption. Although this is of course a very effective consideration during surgery and treatment, it can be suffocating if it is applied too widely throughout the life cycle of the patient experience.
Just consider the standard waiting room. Almost everyone is now equipped with flat-screen TVs that broadcast to patients and their families throughout the day, although hospitals are unlikely to require proof of their effectiveness in resolving patient stress and boredom before installing them. So why are there so many reviews and hesitations before trying consumer-grade VR headsets, which are now about the same price as waiting room TVs?
At the same time, the VR industry can become a better advocate for healthcare. Although Facebook’s Quest series of headsets have made slow but steady progress in the consumer market, it ignores the potential needs of the 4,000 US hospitals that deal with millions of patients every day. (Unlike impatient gamers who are often hesitant about the VR setup process, healthcare patients usually only have time.) In addition, Oculus’s unnecessary complex setup may be a friction point for many people; even more worrying Yes, the Facebook ID login requirement is a privacy red flag. (Older cordless models, such as Samsung’s Gear and Google’s recently discontinued Daydream, do not need to log in to Facebook. You can find a ready-made new market here.)
The healthcare industry’s innovation in patient treatment is admirable, but it’s Patient comfort. Unfortunately, the need for the latter’s leap in faith in the pandemic era is very urgent and will not disappear anytime soon. And I strongly suspect that stable Covid patients, in particular, can benefit a lot from VR during their long recovery period. Until recently they had difficulty breathing, and now facing the prospect of staring at the opposite wall for weeks, they can spend most of their time restoring calm, breezy forests that seem to be full of alpine air.
Photo: Anna Frank, Getty Images
