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credit: VR Airway Lab by Arch Virtual
The Healthcare Industry (also called the Medical Industry or Health
Economy) is an aggregation and integration of sectors within the
economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with
curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care. The
modern healthcare industry is divided into many sectors and depends on
interdisciplinary teams of trained professionals and paraprofessionals to meet
health needs of individuals and populations. Consuming over 10 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, healthcare can form an
enormous part of a country's economy.
The use of Serious Games in healthcare is fast-growing in a
number of different fronts such as Serious Games for cognitive rehabilitation
and physical therapy ; Serious Games for health promotion and education; Serious
Games for educating and training healthcare professionals; Serious Games for patient
distraction and pain relief (source: Norwegian Centre for E-Health Research Fact-sheet-2016-11-Serious-Games-in-Healthcare.pdf).
At the same time, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are
gradually finding their way into healthcare practice where they have already
proven to be effective in treating a range of conditions and improving
patients' health and well-being.
Serious Games for Physical
Therapy
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credit: Israeli start-up VRPhysio® is at the forefront of harnessing gaming
technology to help treat neck, spinal and other injuries
Serious Games For Health Promotion
And Education
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credit: Tako Dojo game by Grifo Multimedia, designed to meet the needs of young patients with diabetes, encouraging
self-empowerment for independent management of their disease, and supporting
treatment adherence
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credit: Stanford University School of Medicine Pioneering Use Of VR For Patient
Engagement
Serious Games For Educating And
Training Healthcare Professionals
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credit: VR Airway Lab by Arch Virtual helps learners understand the basics and
best practices of airway management
Video Games As A Pain Distraction
Mechanism
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credit: UT Health San Antonio tailors treatments to each patient's condition by
creating enjoyable distractions during painful situations
“Gaming in the Healthcare Industry is extremely well-received and
accepted by everyone from administrators to practitioners, who recognized the
power and potential Serious Games have for patient treatment,” says Katrin
Becker, Ph.D., a computer science educator at Mount Royal University and the
University of Calgary and an internationally known expert in the design and
analysis of Serious Games, in a recent interview to the Calgary
Journal.
A recent
study by the University of Cambridge suggests that mental
health and the treatment of anxiety through VR gaming is comparable in efficacy
to face-to-face therapy.
“VR has the potential to transform the assessment, understanding and
treatment of mental health problems. The capability of VR to simulate reality
could greatly increase access to psychological therapies, while treatment
outcomes could be enhanced by the technology’s ability to create new realities.
VR may merit the level of attention given to neuroimaging,” concludes the
study.
Augmented reality (AR) differs from VR in that users do not lose touch
with reality. As AR works with everyday
mobile technology and it puts information in eyesight as fast as possible, it
has strong potential for the future. Augmented reality offers a new way to
interact with data hands-free, which will provide a greater level of control
and access to knowledge.
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credit: The AccuVein scanner uses augmented reality to digitally display a map
of veins on the skin in real time, to make it easier to draw blood. A
handheld scanner projects on the skin and shows the patients’ veins. It
increases the successful finding the vein from the first try in 3.5 times
With advances in technologies and revolutions in patient, trainee, and
public expectations, the global Health Economy is increasingly turning to VR,
AR and video game technologies to provide realistic and adaptive virtual
environments, proven to be motivational and beneficial in healthcare.