Revolutionizing Healthcare Education with Extended Reality: Opportunities and Recommendations

Nick Roseth, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the VR/AR Association recently discussed on XR Today the large interest in Extended Reality (XR) for healthcare: “healthcare is one of the big bright spots in [the] XR industry.” XR has been showing tremendous potential in the healthcare community, as it can elevate current training and educational models, and allow for safer surgeries due to it providing clear vision to surgeons. Companies like Navari Surgical, Dancing Mind, Tripp, and more are utilizing XR technologies to create interactive and engaging training environments that simulate real-life medical scenarios, cognitive rehabilitation for neurodegenerative disease or trauma patients, and mindfulness experiences to increase quality of sleep. These technologies provide several benefits:

• Enhanced Learning: XR allows students to practice procedures in a risk-free environment, improving their skills without compromising patient safety.
• Accessibility: XR can make high-quality medical education accessible to remote and underserved areas, addressing disparities in healthcare training.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Over time, XR can reduce the costs associated with traditional training methods, such as physical models and cadavers.

The recent Augmented World Expo (AWE) in California also highlighted the importance of XR in healthcare. A talk by Bob Fine and Laura Kusumoto discussed XR in healthcare’s history in 15 minutes, and highlighted how the industry has been explored and built upon, how clinical trials have been made, gone through, and are now at the stage of clinical acceptance, and how XR in healthcare is really working.

As XR technology is now in the clinical acceptance phase, its far-reaching implications are important to understand and discuss, especially as healthcare is one of the top verticals for XR.

• Improved Patient Outcomes: By enhancing the skills of healthcare providers, XR can lead to better patient care and outcomes. Training in a realistic, immersive environment helps medical professionals handle real-world situations more effectively.
• Addressing Healthcare Disparities: XR can bridge the gap in medical training across different regions, ensuring that even remote and underserved areas have access to advanced educational tools.
• Workforce Development: XR helps in continuous professional development, keeping healthcare workers updated with the latest practices and technologies, which is crucial in a rapidly evolving field like medicine.

Nursing schools have been adopting XR more readily than medical schools. XR education has helped strengthen the learners’ competency as professional nurses and the quality of education has been maintained by ensuring consistent content. The uptick in medical schools is not yet seeing the same uptick that nursing schools are, but this may well come down to the assumptions around XR. Osso VR provides medical training with its academy, and Imperial College London is one of the few initiatives to implement XR as an immersive and interactive learning tool within education, enabling students and trainees to practice complex surgical skills, anatomy lessons, and emergency medical procedures in simulated environments.

Adopting and educating medical staff and the healthcare system early is essential to maximize the benefits of XR in healthcare education. To do so, the following steps are recommended:

• Expand Research: Conduct comprehensive studies to further understand the long-term effects of XR on learning outcomes and patient care. Rigorous, peer-reviewed research will help validate the efficacy of XR and guide best practices. Not only this, but companies that use their research and clinical trial outcomes as their sales and marketing strategy, such as Rendever, have seen loyalty and increases in customer subscriptions. Not only does it expand the knowledge on how XR is helping within the healthcare community in a quantitative manner, but it also serves as free marketing.
• Enhance Accessibility: Develop cost-effective XR solutions that can be widely adopted, especially in resource-limited settings. Partnerships with tech companies can help reduce costs and improve accessibility. More competition within the headset space is required for this to happen, and for the XR market to grow. Currently, only a few notable companies are developing Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), and to develop and update hardware in a more productive manner, more competitors are required.
• Integrate with Existing Systems: Ensure that XR technologies are seamlessly integrated into existing educational frameworks. This includes training educators to effectively use XR tools and aligning XR content with curriculum standards. This is already being seen in nursing schools and, for example, Imperial College London, but this initiative needs to be adopted more widely in the education system. XR is not meant to replace, it is meant to enhance, and without understanding its potential early on, it will not be used to its fullest.
• Focus on Reimbursement and Funding: Address the financial barriers to XR adoption by working on reimbursement models and securing funding for initial setup and maintenance. Understanding and navigating the reimbursement landscape is crucial for sustainable implementation. Prior to approaching this strategy, it is important to also understand that XR hardware for healthcare will need to be different from regular/consumer headsets. This is because the requirements for professional medical staff is demanding and different for each user, and the User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) will need to be tailor specific, otherwise the technology will not work very well.
• Ethical and Privacy Considerations: Develop robust policies to address data privacy and ethical concerns associated with XR use in healthcare education. Ensuring the security and privacy of user data is paramount as these technologies become more widespread, and as Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be increasingly integrated in these technologies.

The integration of XR in healthcare education holds immense potential to revolutionize medical training, improve patient outcomes, and address educational disparities. By expanding research, enhancing accessibility, integrating with existing systems, focusing on reimbursement, and addressing ethical concerns, the healthcare sector can fully harness the benefits of XR, enhancing the healthcare industry.