The health industry has become a key focus for the Extended Reality (XR) industry, driving content creation for virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). Health care could be transformed by immersive technologies, for example, to train empathy in health professionals, enhance therapies for patients, or to augment the operating table to improve the accuracy of surgery.
In the third instalment of the Atlantic Institute webinar series, Being Human When Digital, specialist in immersive health care, Deepa Mann-Kler, a TEDx speaker and thought leader who is also a graduate of social policy from the LSE, and Jeremy Lim, Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity in Southeast Asia, will discuss its benefits and explain more about its potential.
Augmented reality (AR) offers clinicians real-time contextual information to support their work with patients. It crosses geographic boundaries and creates opportunities for remote surgery and expert support. AR and VR tools can help surgeons or medical students simulate operations with others by studying 3D replicas of patients’ scans to practice procedures. The development of virtual trauma rooms enable students to prepare for emergencies before they happen, allowing them to fail without risk to life. Such technology can liberate images from the screen, bringing them into a space in which we engage with the information in a deeper and more physical way.
The therapeutic opportunities for virtual realities are huge, as they can help patients recovering from brain injuries to cope with everyday tasks, and enable doctors to analyse which areas of daily living may present challenges for a patient. It can also offer empathy training for friends and family of the diagnosed and therapeutic support for post-traumatic stress disorder.
After the webinar series for Fellows and program staff only, the podcasts will be available on Soundcloud. Listen to previous webinars here.
Fellows and program staff can find more details on the HUB here.