VR: Promises and Challenges in 2021 (Rafael Grossman, Jennifer Esposito, Aaron Gani)
A lot has been done in the VR for healthcare space by today, especially in the US. The therapeutic potential is undeniable. Over 5000 studies have shown the efficacy of VR for pain management, PTSD, eating disorders, mental health, even helping manage pain during childbirth. Where are the challenges at the moment?
In the general public, the confusion regarding what is virtual and what augmented reality is disappearing. The field is developing under the term medical extended reality or XR.
Increasing Approvement of XR by Regulators
In 2020 the FDA gave VR a special designation as a breakthrough device for managing pain. In November 2021 the FDA authorized marketing of a prescription-use immersive virtual reality (VR) system that uses cognitive behavioral therapy and other behavioral methods to help with pain reduction in patients 18 years.
The regulators are on board with VR, progress is happening on the software and hardware side, so where is VR at the moment in terms of development, challenges, and accessibility?
Does Insurance Cover XR?
As mentioned by Jennifer Esposito, Vice President and General Manager of Health Business Unit at Magic Leap, reimbursement is not necessarily a problem, since some healthcare providers can use some of the existing CPT codes (Current Procedural Terminology (CPT codes) are numbers assigned to every task and service a medical healthcare provider may provide to a patient including medical, surgical, and diagnostic services). As she also emphasized, the development of XR solutions is going beyond the low-hanging fruit solutions such as medical education and visualization of internal organs to more complex problems.
Aaron Gani, CEO of BehaVR, a mental health company with the mission to liberate the world from fear and pain, observes that the main progress in the last two years has been the explosion of data that confirms the efficacy and usability of XR solutions in healthcare. He believes the next two years will bring additional clarity around reimbursement, which will further improve accessibility, at least in the US.
Connected world in an XR space
Rafael Grossman, futurist, surgeon, and one of the key authorities in the medical XR space, hopes that in the near future, combining progress made in the VR space, complemented by the progress in digital health innovation, IoT devices, and AI more generally, will enable an improved patient and physician experience. Imagine if patients could go through their procedure in VR before an operation? What could be a better way to obtain informed consent? And imagine doctors going to visit patients with various patient data presented at glance, drawn from various sources, he mentioned.
Listen to the full episode:
Speakers:
Jennifer Esposito - Vice President and General Manager, Health Business Unit at Magic Leap, which is pioneering an augmented reality platform to amplify enterprise productivity. https://www.magicleap.com/en-us
Aaron Gani - CEO of BehaVR which cultivates community with the country’s leading researchers, advocates and clinical domain experts to co-develop solutions https://www.behavr.com/
Rafael Grossman - Surgeon, Educator, speaker and one of the leading voice in medical extended reality space. https://www.rafaelgrossmann.com/