Virtual reality is helping diagnose medical conditions remotely

"The metaverse is coming — so we’re told — though it’s hard to know exactly what that means. There are companies using virtual reality to recreate office life down to the conference rooms, for some reason. And, of course, VR is big for gaming and other diversions.
But virtual reality is also increasingly being used in health care, especially as more services go remote.
About 200 hospitals in the United States are using virtual reality tools to not only help train doctors, but also help manage patients’ pain from surgery, irritable bowel syndrome or cancer, said Brennan Spiegel, the director of health services research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. And recently, the technology’s applications have grown to include diagnosing conditions like glaucoma.
The following is an edited transcript of host Meghan McCarty Carino’s conversation with Spiegel.
Brennan Spiegel: An example of using VR for glaucoma emerged during the pandemic, when there was one example of a patient at home who really needed to have his eyes checked. And his doctors developed a software program so he can do it at home, in the VR headset, to actually make decisions about whether he needs to be seen or be treated and so forth. And so whether it’s that or it’s any number of other conditions, virtual reality is proving to be a very interesting platform to allow for accurate home-based diagnosis..." Lire la suite