Have you ever thought of experiencing the Moon or Mars? Or standing inside your living hall and experiencing a waterfall or a forest? All these are possible with the help of Virtual Reality. The arrival of virtual reality made drastic changes in the field of business. We live in the advanced healthcare setups; it usually doesn’t take too much time in the field of healthcare to come up with advanced technologies to ensure better treatment and experience.
Today 18% of US medical practitioners are using virtual reality professionally; the number will increase tremendously by coming years. The medical students can experience and learn a variety of complicated scenarios through using high-end VR equipment. This trend will continue in the health industry undoubtedly.
Benefits of Virtual Reality in Healthcare
Virtual reality is using in various domains of the healthcare industry; treatments, surgery, rehabilitation, and counseling. 50% of US physicians would like to use VR technologies to learn new treatments and conditions. It is one of the media that can be used by both medical practitioners and patients. This made virtual reality popular and acceptable.
To Develop a Preoperative Planning
Using VR technology, the doctors and the medical team can develop a plan for the complex operation that is going to takes place. It helps doctors to walk through the surgery, rehearse it, and adopt a better strategy that could help the patients and doctors. The doctors can use CT, MRI, and ultrasound scans to create virtual models of the patient’s body to practice the operation. Preoperative planning would give better results to the patients.
Therapy for Phobia and PTSD
VR is playing a key role in treating mental health issues like PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and phobias. In 1997, VR has been used to heal the soldier’s PTSD. The sensory experience provided by VR is powerful to treat this condition. Along with medicines, doctors can suggest virtual reality for the patients. The same technique applies to phobia patients as well; gradual exposure to the object of the fear through VR technology would give relief from the phobia.
Pain Management
VR will help patients to tolerate the pain during the treatment; it is playing a vital role in pain management. The experts are researching it; a successful result would be bliss for people who have a hazardous effect on anesthesia and sedation. Through virtual reality, doctors can divert the attention of the patient from pain. Showing VR videos would take the patient’s concentration from pain to the visuals. It can use for patients who have to deal with post-surgery pain and chronic pain like burning.
Stroke and Head Injury
People who are suffering to recover from stroke and head injury can use VR techniques to get a speedy recovery. VR environment helps the patient to gain more confidence; it helps them to face challenges like balancing and moving. Gradually, they overcome these issues completely. Virtual reality games are designed in a particular way to stimulate the various parts of the brain damaged by the stroke. Let us expect a satisfactory result from on-going research o this domain.
Reducing Stress among Patients
VR will help to regulate the stress and boredom among patients admitted into the hospitals. The constant thoughts of disease, pain, family, and the duration of the sickness would always adversely affect the patient’s emotional and mental wellness. Keeping high mental health is important at the time of treating a disease. VR can be used for entertainment purposes in hospitals. Introducing new videos and games in a VR environment would ensure stress relief among patients.
Treating Addiction
VR will help to recover people who are addicted to substances such as alcohol, cigarette, and drugs. Medical VR helps to prevent relapses from occurring in the future. Based on the patient’s addiction and history the doctors can adjust the VR environment. Along with other medication; patients can utilize this technique for a speedy and lifelong recovery.
Field of Higher Education
The introduction of VR techniques in medical higher education will bring remarkable changes. In this advanced era, learning anatomy with a traditional method wouldn’t make much sense. Anatomy VR programs will help the students to explore the human body and learn the most complicated lessons. Doctors and medical students are started using VR techniques for performing operations.
Technology is playing a crucial role in the human day to day life. Indisputably we can say that technology made our life more safe and secure. Let’s hope that virtual reality will make phenomenal changes in the field of the healthcare industry.