XR (or Extended Reality) is a collective term for all immersive technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). All of this "strengthens" our reality, blending the real world with computer-generated elements and creating a completely immersive virtual experience.
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Virtual reality (VR) is often used in education and training. For example, in an anatomy class, students can examine virtual models.
Augmented reality (AR) overlays computer-generated content on what you see in the real world and is primarily used in phone apps and smart glasses.
Mixed reality (MR) is similar to augmented reality in that the device projects computer-generated content. The basic difference is that mixed reality content is responsive and spatially perceived.
How Is XR Transforming Healthcare?
Extended reality is at the forefront of exciting new innovations in healthcare. Widely recognized as a great tool for educational applications, AR, MR, and VR can provide even more functionality.
As an advocate of virtual reality healthcare simulation, VR trains talented nurses and doctors, hires the best candidates, promotes retention of valued employees, and is safely practiced by healthcare professionals.
Potential Benefit Of Applying Extended Reality Solutions To Surgical Science
Extended reality is increasing new possibilities for clinical practitioners and has a brilliant future, specifically for contemporary-day healthcare institutions.
XR technology has the potential to assist surgeons inside the operating room by way of means saving them time looking for critical records for key choices.
Some of the most important programs of XR in healthcare encompass educating new clinical practitioners and presenting patients with knowledge of the illness.
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Extended Reality (XR) for medical use cases has proven to be beneficial to both patients and medical care. Not just professionals throughout the medical industry, but all other stakeholders. Healthcare is one of them, the largest industry that uses XR technology.
Some of the XR use cases include better assisting surgeons to perform surgery, immersing patients and medical professionals in medical information, and also by educating and training in an XR environment. An ethical framework is needed, which will develop further with best practices in all medical and technical fields to ensure the safe and impartial use of the techniques.
Extended Reality Technology To Support Surgical Workflow
Current developments in the field of extended reality (XR) could manifestly be useful in the optimization of surgical workflows, time effectiveness, and postoperative outcome. Although still fundamentally a subject of research, the state of XR technologies is rapidly improving and approaching feasibility for a broad clinical application. Surgical fields of application of XR technologies are currently primarily training, preoperative planning, and intra-operative assistance. For all these three areas, products already remain (some clinically approved) and technical feasibility studies have been conducted.
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In teaching, the use of XR can already be assessed as fundamentally practical and meaningful but still needs to be evaluated in large multicenter studies. Although XR can also provide benefits in preoperative planning, technical limitations often make routine use more difficult. However, meaningful assessments are not yet possible, as there are usually no meaningful assessment studies for intra-operative use. In addition, profitability assessments are missing in all three areas. XR technology provides proven benefits in surgical workflows, despite the lack of high-quality evaluation of XR for practical and clinical use. New ideas for effective interaction with XR media also need to be developed. Further research is needed and technological development in this field can be expected in the future.
References
P. Milgram and F. Kishino, “A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Displays,” IEICE Transactions on Information Systems, pp. Vol E77-D, December 1994. [Link]
Microsoft, “Mixed Reality,” 9 November 2017. [Link].
Microsoft, “What is Mixed Reality?,” 01 July 2021. [Link].
G. S. Weinbaum, “Pygmalion's Spectacles,” in Wonder Stories, Continental Publications, 1935, p. 28.
A. Artaud, Le Theatre et son Double, Paris: Gallimard, 1938.
J. Norman, “Antonin Artaud Describes ‘La Réalité Virtuelle’,” 01 Sept 2021. [Link].
The Franklin Institute, “History of Virtual Reality,” 02 September 2021.
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