HTC Vive and Wan Fang Hospital are bringing their expertise together to build a VR education room for patients. These rooms will be equipped with Vive’s standalone headset called the Vive Focus. The tetherless headset runs without needing a PC computer to run educational and even entertainment based applications.
How HTC and Wan Fang Hospital are Working Together
DeepQ, HTC’s healthcare division, are working with Taipei Municipal Wan Fang Hospital along with the Focus headsets. How will they use technology in a hospital setting? They are putting their efforts towards creating the VR education room, which is a first of its kind.
Imagine getting diagnosed with a disease or being told you need surgery. Talking with a specialist or doctor is a primary way to get information about health. Now, the new room at Wan Fang Hospital and headsets from Vive will help patients get educated about medical procedures, serving as a second line of information.
“Vive Focus can be used as a tool to break down barriers between doctors and their patients to improve care and drive education of patients to new levels,” said Edward Chang, President of HTC’s DeepQ division in a press release.
“With Vive Focus, medical consultation can become mobile and more approachable to patients and doctors alike. We’re proud to work with Taipei Municipal Wan Fang Hospital to explore how VR can begin to change medicine.”
The hospital is using the standalone VR headset to show them how medical procedures will affect them and how medical issues can be treated. This paints a clearer picture for the patient about what to expect and can help alleviate some of the fear that may come along with surgery or other medical treatments.
VR Helps Us See What We Usually Can’t
Clearly, we can’t see inside ourselves without a doctor’s specialized tools. VR technology is transforming how we view models of the external and internal parts of our bodies. Patients are now going to be able to use it to view human organs and anatomy models, and also be able to zoom in and get a better view of smaller structures like nerves and blood vessels.
The new application for the Focus will have more than “4,000 detailed structural components and micro structures” their release details. This will also get updated with more models and tools as time goes on. They are also going to integrate this new VR education system with the Health Information System (HIS), a review system for patients, making it entirely digital.
Recently surgeons began to use Virtual Reality 3D models to help train new surgeons and to help medical professionals plan out treatment and surgeries. The application also helped patients and doctors see, turn, and zoom in on actual replications of the smallest parts of patients brains. This helped patients get more detail about what parts were being affected and how the medical teams would go about treatment.
VR headsets and applications in hospitals are helping patients and medical teams see the inner workings of their bodies and a clearer path towards treatments and surgical procedures. Who knows, maybe seeing things up close in virtual replicas and simulations will help improve methods in treatment.
