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Clinical VR. Such VR simulation systems have targeted the assessment and treatment of cognitive, psychological, motor, and functional impairments across a wide range of clinical health conditions. Moreover, continuing advances in the underlying enabling technologies for creating and delivering VR applications have resulted in its widespread availability as a consumer product, sometimes at a very low cost.
The idea of using virtual reality to assess and treat the effects of medical conditions and pain is not new. VR first emerged in the late 1980s, and although the vision for its use clinically was sound, it did not take off then due to immature technology and prohibitive costs. With new more affordable VR equipment now on the market, VR is now ready for clinical settings. Systems that cost 10’s of thousands of dollars back then can be purchased for a few hundred dollars and offer a more comfortable and high-fidelity VR experience.
Our Medical VR laboratory had its origins in the mid-1990’s and derived from my early clinical work in the area of cognitive rehabilitation following brain injury, stroke, and other neurological conditions. In the early 1990s, I had become increasingly frustrated by the limited state of cognitive rehabilitation. I believe this was in part due to the absence of technology that could be used to automate training and provide a more compelling experience that would engage patients in the many repetitive and boring activities needed to improve brain “repair” and recover functional abilities. Thus, a big part of the problem was seen in getting a patient to do a sufficient amount of focused cognitive rehabilitative training. I would tell my
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