Virtual Reality in Healthcare

VR is revolutionizing the Healthcare industry. Is your organization ready?

While virtual reality has become well-known in the entertainment industry and gaming circles, its applications reach widely into many other industries. Healthcare VR is the use of virtual reality in any scenario that promotes the education of medical professionals, the quality of patient care or research and development into new healthcare solutions.

Roomscale VR and other solutions can be leveraged by healthcare organizations to improve training protocols, improve patient outcomes and cut costs. Here's what you need to know about leveraging healthcare VR for continuous improvement, growth and positive outcomes within the field.

How Can VR Be Leveraged in Healthcare?

Virtual reality has numerous applications in the healthcare field, and some of the places television medical dramas are taking the VR concept aren't that far off from real life. Here are just a few areas where virtual reality and healthcare are ideal partners.

Planning for emergency and crisis situations
Organizations can place participating staff in situations and environments they may face in the future to test the outcomes of different plans or work through questions about necessary skills, resources or response times. And with VR, all of this is done without expensive reenactments or putting patients or staff at risk.

Training staff
VR can also be used as a tool for training hospital and other medical staff. Labor and delivery team members can work together to enhance communication and response times, and OR staff might work to perfect hand-offs and other important functions required in the operating room.

Preparing for patient treatment
While virtual reality is not a replacement for hands-on patient care, internships and other traditional forms of healthcare training, it can help teams prepare for specific patient treatment needs they may have no way of encountering in real life. For example, surgeons may use VR to walk through the various components of a rare surgery they're only familiar with in practice before entering the OR.

Research and development
Device companies and other R&D firms can put prototypes through their paces even before clinical trials or other tests. In these cases, VR may be able to identify critical issues before development takes further steps, generating better overall quality and allowing medical researchers to eventually move at a faster pace to market without compromising quality.

Appropriate design of spaces or equipment. Virtual reality can also be used to stage care environments, from ER waiting rooms to patient treatment spaces to operating rooms or pharmacies. By staging these areas in a virtual environment first, organizations or designers can add, remove and move equipment and resources, allowing individuals to test interactions with various setups, before making permanent purchasing or construction decisions.

Why Should Facilities, Medical Teams and Others Use Healthcare VR?

Healthcare organizations willing to invest in VR technology can experience a variety of benefits, including:

A reduction in risk events as they add a powerful planning and training tool to their processes
An increase in staff confidence and competence as doctors and other providers are able to leverage high-tech training techniques and explore new skills and practices
Cost reduction, since virtual reality can be incorporated alongside traditional training and planning methods but doesn't require additional physical materials outside of the initial equipment setup

Why Work With Look On Media?

The VR pros behind Look On Media have a passion for the technology that dates back to the early adoption of VR in wide-ranging gaming and entertainment applications. We also have a background working in industries such as education and healthcare. Our team knows how to create engaging, useful VR applications like 360 video and 3D roomscale VR with the very real approaches necessary for ROI in the medical field.

Make Use of Virtual Reality in Healthcare

Are you interested in adding VR to your healthcare organization? Contact Look On Media to find out how VR and Look On Media can help your organization chase continuous improvement and succeed with goals.

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