
Hope Weaver
This Is Why Your Dr. Is Going To Tell You To Buy A VR Set.

(SenseGlove booth | CES 2020)
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, virtual
reality has a place other than your living room. They write in this article
about the benefits of implemented VR into healthcare practice. Their aim
is not to help you recover after getting "rekt" in Call of Duty Rather, their
goal is to help people suffering with depression or anxiety.
Imagine leaving a doctor's office with a prescription to play VR. That's soon
be a real thing! One of the benefits virtual reality offers is the ability to
immerse yourself in another world. And with the help of other stimulating
factors, like the SenseGlove for your haptic senses and Sennheiser's
AMBEO 3D sound technology, that transformation is practically complete.
It's these benefits that doctors aim to exploit. If they can put a patient
in a safe environment that'll allow them to cope with their anxiety or
depression without medication, it's a win all-around.
The thing with VR is that your brain still processes the experiences as a
real experience. The controlled-environment in VR space has
been proven to an effective-technique to combat these mental
ailments.
With prescription companies shoving the hot next pill down everyone's
throat (no pun-intended) in tv commercials, the emergence of a
non-drug alternative is very welcoming. Specially for an area of medicine that has
had such a dark past (and present) with it's prescription use.
Not only is it welcoming, but when applied to chemotherapy patients,
it has shown positive results to ease the pain and stress of the
long dreadful and painful journey.

(Cosmetic Surgery | Stock Footage)
Another unlikely place for VR to show up is at the operating room.
Well, to be honest, we're not sure exactly it's in the "O.R."
itself, but at least in the process right before it.
Some surgeons have experimented with using VR in pre-operation
to show patients a preview of their results.
The possibilities don't stop there, though.
One of the applications I'm most excited about is it's potential
role in the pediatric space.
Imagine being six years old and the doctor walks in, the cold
hospital air drifts into the room, scalpel in hand and she says
with a commanding voice:
"I need to cut you up kid"
Now imagine the same doctor comes in with a sweet new
VR set in her hand and say's:
"Okay kid, we're going to another world"
Okay, that was a little dramatic, but you get the idea. It would
be a much cooler experience for the kids (and parents) to
deal with a diagnosis or as a vehicle to explain the surgery
procedure to them without freaking them out as much.

(VR In Medicine | Source: https://bit.ly/3qGEQJG)
Well this all sounds great and all, but it's probably kind of expensive, right?
Who knows? But if we're honest, this will probably take some time
before popular adoption in the medical culture, anyway.
Only time will tell.