From medical education to pain alleviation, virtual reality continues to make inroads in healthcare. The potential for that and other technologies was discussed as part of a panel hosted by The Washington Post this week focusing on turning innovations in science and technology into a reality for patients.
Mary Spio, CEO of CEEK Virtual Reality, said at the event that her company already has partnered with Miami Children’s Hospital to focus on improving education for providers. For example, she said, surgeons there have used a 3-D printed heart and VR to practice pediatric heart surgery before scrubbing in for a live procedure. She also said CEEK is looking into the use of telepresence to help doctors diagnose patients with highly contagious and dangerous diseases.
“Ultimately, what we want to be able to do is use ... force feedback for a doctor to be able to be here in Washington and diagnose someone who may be on the outer edge of the world, but you can feel their temperature or feel a bump on them and do those types of things,” Spio said.
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Michael McLoughlin, chief engineer for the Research and Exploratory Development Department at Johns Hopkins University, talked about the collaboration behind creating technologies such as a mind-controlled prosthetic arm--which included neuroscientists, as well as space, biomedical, electrical and mechanical engineers--as well as the potential for such innovations going forward. For example, he said a patient he was working with was able to fly a plane via a flight simulator almost effortlessly after he and his colleagues plugged the brain-computer interface used to control a prosthetic arm into the simulator.
“The lesson there is, not that [the patient] was able to do that, but when you think about somebody that is highly disabled, it really challenges us to think about what a disability is,” McLoughlin said. “She might actually be a better pilot than any of us, because she has all of this unused ability. ... It opens up new doors and it challenges us to think about the way in which we can really use some of these technologies to improve lives.”
Tufts Medical Center also is taking advantage of VR, using the technology to help ease patient anxiety.