The need for VR in healthcare / Stefan Vogelzang

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. This blog is about, among other things, where we are moving towards with Virtual Reality, but also the potential and the power. But first of all, who am I to tell you about that? So let's briefly review my experiences in the world of VR/AR.

My partner Fabian Debats (also partner in VRelax) and I have had experience in the world of 2009° video production since 360. We've flown around the world countless times for our planet's major brands, capturing beautiful footage for them. Each time, we were challenged to think creatively about the application of 360° video and how to integrate it into global social media marketing campaigns (VR didn't exist then). From our other company VIEMR we have started to apply that knowledge more broadly and we have taken the daring step to establish our office in Groningen as the odd one out in 2014. That was at a time when people didn't know anything about VR and AR. From day one, we decided to stay away from the gimmicky nature that VR took on in the years after 2014.

We came up with solutions for education, care and technology. By making the effects measurable, customers became very interested in our services. Our motto: Making the unattainable accessible and imitating situations within training that could normally not be trained. Think of risky situations such as working in hazardous environments.

It was a bull's eye and soon companies such as NAM, mammoet, Boskalis and Waterschap were standing on our doorstep. Our team was always aware of the latest techniques and we try to apply them immediately. 360° video and VR . also turned out to provide insight into processes that are difficult to understand a perfect solution.

VR in healthcare

Soon we shifted more and more to healthcare, because we saw that many problems and challenges could be solved with VR/AR. A strong concept in this was to use Virtual Reality as a so-called 'empathy tool'. That is, to give people a look inside the head of, for example, a person with dementia, someone with an eating disorder or a low-literate person. Why do they do what they do and how do you make that clear? Together with psychologists, we devised ironclad scripts and turned them into very high-quality VR experiences. They are still used today to create a better understanding of family, healthcare professionals and informal caregivers.

How strong does VR/AR work as an empathy tool?The World Economic Forum wrote a nice piece about this in relation to the conservation of our oceans. This is to create more understanding and empathy about how we view and deal with our nature. The best examples, however, come from more complex care, with people with serious mental or physical problems. The UMCG already achieved success in 2018 with the fighting phantom pain with VR.

But the need is greatest on a mental level. Depression, anxiety disorders and problems with alcohol and drugs affect about 1,8 million Dutch people aged 18 to 65 years. Students are experiencing more and more pressure at school. About 840.000 young people experience mental challenges and/or complaints. And 1 in 15 young people in the Netherlands suffers from depression. The queues in (youth) GGZ are to cry. It's not for nothing that the government is now finally take targeted actions.

 

“We spend fifty times more on curing disease than on preventing it.” 

 

It is great to see that VR can be an excellent replacement for many medications and can be used as a helpline and supplement to existing treatments. There are countless studies that show that VR works extremely well in treating mental problems. Just look at how much research our partner the University Center Psychiatry Center (UCP) of the University Medical Center Groningen is conducting. on their website learn more about what they do.

Our own product VRelax is an example of this and has the most science behind it of all VR companies active in healthcare in the Netherlands. We often get the news.

But also look at the VR experience GameChange, in which users visit virtual environments that mimic everyday situations. They are guided by a virtual coach. The scientists at the University of Oxford developed this and research shows that the therapy can help even the most severe forms of psychosis. According to the team of researchers who developed GameChange, it could even replace real-life therapists in the future…

The future!

But where are we right now and where are we moving? Everyone knows what VR and AR is by now, right? True, but there is still so much unseen potential in terms of software and hardware that many people don't know about yet. 360° cameras are getting better and cheaper. This way you can create beautiful VR worlds more easily and at lower production costs. In terms of software, you also see that large development platforms such as Unreal and Unity are working on solutions such as Quixel  en metahuman to create realistic 3D environments with relative ease that can be used in VR and the Metaverse. Wonderful things await us. And that bodes well for companies such as VRelax, which are already making great strides in this market.

But people are picky and also quickly get used to what they see. The VR industry must therefore move even faster to make the masses realize what its true potential is and how they can enrich their lives with it. It is important that we take a good look at how we distinguish gimmick applications from real added value. You see that AR has been taken much more seriously as a future 'added reality' for years. Google tried it back in 2009 with the Google Glass, but it was too early and it flopped. But after the successful Microsoft Hololens 2 from 2020, Apple is now also working on a very high-quality AR glasses that will soon have the size and weight of normal reading glasses.

In recent years, VR has unfortunately acquired the image of a gimmick, because large companies mainly started positioning VR as a new form of entertainment. Despite this being obvious, it doesn't do justice to the true potential of VR. It always comes back to the core value of VR as a technology: you can take people to places they can't normally be. Perhaps therein lies the great secret. People increasingly want to escape from reality, which is becoming increasingly gray. If you look at what VR is already capable of and what is to come from that perspective, it cannot be otherwise than that VR will become very big. We are not even tired of the Oculus Quest 2, but the new XR headset from Meta (former Facebook) is already on the doorstep under project name 'Cambria'.

First official images Meta Cambria project / expected in 2023

The developments of the Metaverse are a good example of how fast the virtual world can grow. Even though it is not new and you already had platforms such as Second Life in 2003, techniques such as Crypto, NFT, blockchain ensure that you now have a lot of new financial and social possibilities. The NRC has a strong piece written about it† They interviewed philosopher David Chalmers and he spoke up for the metaverse and said:

 

“Why is this escapism, what a fake world? That something is a simulation does not make it an illusion. The challenge is in the embodiment; the sensations you get from eating, drinking, sex.”

 

The Metaverse sets no limits to your imagination and freedom of movement

Here too, at home in the Netherlands, healthcare is under great pressure, with a rising and more complex demand for healthcare as a result of changing demographics, a 'tsunami' of technical innovations and uncertain political developments. The Netherlands therefore needs and wants to move towards a future-proof healthcare landscape. What does that future-proof healthcare landscape look like? No one has the answer, but we do know that in 2040, due to aging, among other things 2 million people need in care† That is simply not feasible.

 

“We have a social and societal obligation to bring innovations to the market.”

 

This is no different in other countries, which is why big tech giants are jumping into the gap in healthcare, which of course involves a lot of money. This is how the NRC wrote a piece that 'Zuckerberg Practice' wants to cure all diseases before the end of the century. Marc Zuckerberg already bought a hospital and started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with his wife Priscilla Chan. “We spend fifty times more on curing disease than on preventing it.” 

Back to VR as great potential in healthcare. The problem with VR's commercial image is that everyone wants to be the first to make big firsts in the world of VR. Games like Superhot have been making millions for years with a relatively simple but effective VR shooter game. Then why would you, like our company VRelax, focus on a difficult, preserved sector such as healthcare to try to make a difference here. Our answer is simple: because we can and because we have to. Here we have a social and societal obligation to bring innovations to the market. Yet start-ups are entering healthcare hard off the ground. And fair is fair; VRelax also had to bend corners to find the right connection in this sector and the people who work in it, in crucial periods of our existence. As a team, we have to reinvent the wheel every day. How do you position a product like VRelax in healthcare? And how do you safeguard this as an application within existing processes? Every day a challenge, but a fun one!

 

Stefan Vogelzang / CEO VRelax