Getting an affordable product to the high street involves less technical hurdles than achieving medical device approval, so progress in healthcare VR will be dislocated from consumer availability.
“VR can be used to conquer phobias and fears with exposure therapy increasing doses of their fear, such as heights or spiders, with no risk”
Professor Maged Kamel Boulos, chair of digital health at the Alexander Graham Bell Centre for Digital Health, University of the Highlands and Islands, in Elgin, says VR has graduated from a niche discipline ten years ago with research papers only amounting to a few hundred compared with the 6,500 circulating today.
“VR can also be used to conquer phobias and fears with exposure therapy increasing doses of their fear, such as heights or spiders, with no risk,” he says. “It can be used to develop social skills for autism and relieve anxiety and depression.
“We can employ it to help carers understand what it is like to have schizophrenia and therefore have more empathy with their patients.”