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Daniel Garcia Garrigo

UWRT 1102

Ms. Leah Huizar

04/04/17

Extended Inquiry Project: Virtual Reality in Medicine

Today's society needs medical virtual reality to achieve the next level of scientific

evolution because it will overcome traditional methods already existent as the technology is

safe, advanced and it will be more economic in the long run. Also, it is the best alternative

environmentally as it could substitute various chemical products that, in addition, have a

worse effect on us.

Medicine has evolved substantially as the discoveries of new techniques and

chemicals shaped our view of the concept. But today, we have in our hands a way to change

traditional methods forever and take a step forward into medical evolution. Traditional

methods have a lot of room for improvement, and the rate of success of some treatments is

not as high as we would have expected it to be in 2017. However, medical virtual reality is

slowly growing and taking over some tasks traditional methods weren't able to complete.

Virtual Reality is the use of audiovisual technology to "transport" your mind to a completely

different place or scenario. The great thing about this is that there are basically no limits, and

the range of situations in which we can use it is incredibly broad. I am going to focus on how

it can be applied in recovery and rehabilitation from certain disorders and how they can be

treated, and I will later compare both methods. Furthermore, medicine always has to be safe,

and that makes new technologies more suitable to succeed. People that nowadays have doubts

about changes as big as switching to a more technology-based medicine, will always question
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the possible secondary effects of those. But considering the numerous side-effects that current

medicines can cause, one would be more inclined to choose technologies like Virtual Reality.

And that is also a key factor of the product's credibility. As Albert S. Rizzo mentions in

"Medical Virtual Reality" from the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, "Areas of

specialization are in using VR for mental health therapy, motor skills rehabilitation, cognitive

assessment and clinical skills training". These specific areas of medicine have had no

innovative solutions over the past years, but the opportunities VR offers can change this soon.

This factor will make other unsure people choose these new technologies and become the

change that medicine has been needing this century.

Virtual Reality as a technology started in the video game industry. Its birth was linked

to a new way of playing computer games, which made these industries develop new software

that could fulfill the needs of the players. "Products like HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google

Cardboard have become huge topics of conversation as an era of virtual reality marks its

birth", (Agrawal, AJ. "How Virtual Reality Will Change the Health Industry." Inc.com, 2016).

From this point, the technology was widened its scope, and taken over other areas completely

different from its origin. Medicine has adopted some of these techniques to create new and

innovative ways of fighting psychological disorders, and some of the methods have already

proven to be more effective than traditional methods. This also has a link to the improvement

in surgery techniques by doctors. Virtual Reality provides doctors with a way to perform

surgery simulations using a computer, and they can learn from mistakes in a more secure and

safe way. This gives more credibility to the use of the technology, and it definitely gains more

recognition from doctors and patients. The main audience, patients with some type of

psychological disorder, can see what the effects are for people with the same conditions.

People can then start trusting the technology more, and it will be easier to expand it in

different countries. In my opinion, this type of technology is shaped by the eyes of the
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audience. If the audience doesn't like the product, no matter how good the product is, it is not

going to succeed. And that is why VR technologies should be implemented in medical fields

with such an urgency. In my opinion, the implementation of complex technologies has been

an important issue for the past decade. I couldn't believe that companies that had the

opportunity to do it, didn't invest in research of VR technologies and how they can impact our

lives in such a strong way. Another way I imagined the future in medicine to be like, came

from movies, especially the ones based on the future. Movies like Elysium (2013), based on

2154, showed a future with access to advanced cancer curing centers where all the diseases in

your body can be rejected. This could increase the average lifespan of the population, and

new research would be made so that the technologies improve quicker and in a safer

environment. New discoveries and inventions would be made every year, and the world

would give their attention to the issue. But as everything, this could have a major downside: it

would greatly increase the gap between the poor and the rich. The differences between groups

of people in the world would get stronger and more visible, and there would be more disputes

between the more and the less economically developed nations. This is obviously a factor to

take into consideration, and reflecting on the possible impacts this could have, it is

understandable to have doubts and thoughts of rejection that shave our view.

Safety is one of the most important factors of any type of technology. Engineers

design structures that are mainly safe, and the rest of the qualities come after that. In virtual

reality, you are exposed to an audiovisual set and "transported" to a different reality: a

"virtual" reality. The risks of the technology have been proven to be minimum, and compared

to other methods it is a great alternative. Some medicines can be harmful to humans, and

usually, include a list of secondary effects on the box. The majority of them can only be

prescript by a licensed doctor, and the way that you dispose of them after being used can also

harm the environment. The benefits of virtual reality are clear, but there are also
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disadvantages that ought to be discussed. Most of the people that disagree with this type of

technology will blame it on the innovation and the risk of new unknown ways of treating

people. The technology hasn't been around for too long, so it is assumed that people will have

trust issues. The argument then is not if the technology is safe; in that case, the argument will

be more oriented to the audience. If they don't know the technology is safe, they'll never

assume it is. That is why, in my opinion, this technology should be offered in more centers,

and be tested by more people, so that the patients lose their fear to new possibilities and start

being less negative towards it. If we think about the impacts and the possible people affected

by the dangers of new technologies, my mind would go to the elderly. The majority of them

are fragile and need constant care, which can be provided for them in special centers for the

elderly. However, the lack of appropriate material for their care is a current problem, but that

could change with the inclusion of VR technologies that do most of the work for them.

Virtual Reality can trick the patients' brains into thinking they are somewhere else, which can

be useful to put them in different scenarios and check on how they behave under certain

circumstances. This can help figuring out what their primary needs are and selecting the

necessary tools for their treatment. This same technology can also be used on a large scale to

study the brain and how the interactions between people work. Entire fields of psychology

could benefit from this research, and it could be a key factor for its transition to education.

Universities could benefit from VR technologies to teach the students complex operations

that can't be demonstrated using a different method. Medicine would develop even faster and

the fusion of traditional methods with technology would be more obvious. But the factor of

safety would always come back to play, and it could be one of the most important

determinant factors of the success of this technology. Most current VR sets have similar

disadvantages, some related to the eyes and how they can be damaged by having an entire

screen at half an inch of distance. Article authors like Scott Stein mention that "Healthcare
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professionals don't tend to like the idea of suspending a display an inch or so from your face

for hours and hours" (The Dangers of Virtual Reality, Scott Stein. 2016). On the other hand,

as mentioned before, there haven't been many types of research of the possible secondary

effects of VR, so Stein continues: "I haven't seen many studies of what VR might do as far as

causing eye fatigue", so the negative evidence is not reliable enough yet.

There is the issue of boundaries. Virtual Reality is projected to become huge in the

short future, and its use will be on a global scale. As Albert Einstein said, "I fear the day that

technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots". If

we spend a great amount of time using the VR for things as mundane as buying groceries or

driving around, it will become part of our daily processes, and we will no longer be able to

identify what is real and what is not. "If we start spending a lot of our time in virtual worlds,

where does that leave the real one?", (Rewire Me. December 15, 2016 "9 Ways Virtual

Reality might be Helping-and Harming-Us). That is an issue that we have only seen in

movies so far, but that it could now be closer than ever. Privacy is another disadvantage, and

even though it is an urgent problem nowadays, it can get worse in the future. The exigency

comes in part from our imagination of a world like in science-fiction movies and books,

where the mind can be controlled by a machine. When evaluating a type of technology like

this, every outcome has to be analyzed, and this one could affect people's lives so strongly

that humanity, as we know it today, could disappear in a few years.

This view of Virtual Reality is also shaped by the impact it has on the economy. The

first VR systems date back to the 80's, but the technology was not close to being developed,

and it was in its early stages. It was at the beginning of the 21st century that it developed and

more people starting researching and applying it to other things. In 2014, when Facebook

bought OculusVR for $2 billion (Wired. "Could Virtual Reality Revitalize The Economy?",

Conde Nast. October 08, 2016), the technology became more accessible to more people, and
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the ways people interacted together using it changed its scope and perspective. The revenue

the company was obtaining pushed other companies forward into developing more

accessories and innovating new ways to applying it. Medicine was one of the sectors with a

bigger economic growth and a stronger strive for using it in ways it could help people's lives.

Treating some psychological disorders like OCD or certain phobias is now easier than ever,

and it can be treated with a greater rate of success. Exposing people to different situations

using VR can change the way they react to the stimulus created, and that can be proven by

comparing the traditional methods to the patients treated by a VR system. A headset and a

microphone can get you to any place in the world, and the new ways of "making you feel

things" are making it more credible. Simulators are a huge part of the deal, and surgeons can

now practice in a safe environment. This can improve surgery qualities in the future, which

could even be performed by a machine guided by a surgeon using Virtual Reality to guide its

moves.

It is clear that Virtual Reality is already making a huge impact in the lives of a lot of

people, but it will be much bigger in the future. It is the fastest growing type of technology in

the world, and its possible uses when it is fully developed is something that only the

engineering sector can only imagine nowadays. If there is something this essay advocates for,

is the inclusion of the innovative VR technologies in hospitals and special centers. This could

not only improve people's lives in so many ways, but it would also be a referent for new ways

of teaching. With better teachers and professors, students could become more well-prepared

doctors. As the article Virtual Reality in Surgery by Albert Rizzo mentions, "The use of

computerized simulations could train and assess psychomotor skills needed to perform

invasive procedures . . . The use of virtual reality simulators to guide micro-robots

undertaking minimally invasive interventions", such as heart transplants or lung or heart

surgeries. The ways of training in delicate parts of medicine such as surgeries could affect the
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quality of the operations by the surgeons, and in the future, the machines would have been

adopted the necessary moves perform the operations by itself.

As a conclusion, I think that people's opinions on VR at the moment are not very

reliable as the technology hasn't expanded enough. However, the awareness on this topic is

increasing and more and more people are being introduced to it. I would like to see more

studies and research papers being published about medical VR. Facts like "60 sites, including

VA hospitals, military bases, and university centers, found that the virtual exposure therapy

approach has been shown to produce a meaningful reduction in PTS (Post Traumatic Stress

disorder) symptoms" (Bravemind, Skip Rizzo. 2015). This will be the key factor in the

development of the technology, and the way the people's view is shaped is of tremendous

importance for the future of medical VR. If the consumers don't like the product, the product

will suffer the consequences and its demand will decrease, making it unviable to survive. I

expect that VR is not an example of this obsolescence, and that companies find a way to

engage with the audience, creating products that are designed to increase our standards of

living.
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Works Cited

Agrawal, AJ. "How Virtual Reality Will Change the Health Industry." Inc.com, 2016.
http://www.inc.com/aj-agrawal/how-virtual-reality-will-change-the-health-
industry.html. Accessed 24 February 2017.

McCloy, Rory, et al. "Virtual reality in surgery", 2001. British Medical Journal,
London. Accessed 24 February 2017.

Rewire Me. December 15, 2016 "9 Ways Virtual Reality might be Helping-and Harming-
Us" www.rewireme.com/insight/9-ways-virtual-reality-may-helping-harming-us/.
Accessed 25 February 2017

Rizzo, Albert. "Medical Virtual Reality." USC Institute for Creative Technologies.
2016. http://ict.usc.edu/groups/medical-vr/. Accessed 24 February 2017.

Rizzo, Skip. "Bravemind" USC Institute for Creative Technologies, 2016.

http://medvr.ict.usc.edu/projects/bravemind/ Accessed 23 February 2017.

Stein, Scott. CNET, www.cnet.com/news/the-dangers-of-virtual-reality/, 2016. Accessed 20

February 2017.

Wiederhold, Brenda K. "Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, and Driving Phobia: Lessons

Learned From Efficacy Studies." Series in Anxiety and Related Disorders,
2014, pg. 163-185. Accessed 24 February 2017.

Wired. "Could Virtual Reality Revitalize The Economy?", Conde Nast. October 08, 2016.
www.wired.com/insights/2014/10/virtual-reality-economy/. Accessed 24 February
2017
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