Report calls for greater use of virtual reality technology in health education

New research could influence the improved use of immersive technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), in health education and training.

The report, “Immersive Technologies in Health Training and Education: Three Principles for Progress”, was published by the University of Leeds, with input from a range of academics, technologists and health professionals. Research argues for greater standardization of the use of immersive technologies in healthcare training and education.

The principles were also developed in a letter to the journal BMJ simulation and technology-enhanced learning.

VR training for dental students

The University of Huddersfield was also a major contributor to the report, having conducted research over several years. The research team consisted of Prof. David Peebles, director of the University Center for Cognition and Neuroscience, Matthew Pears, doctoral student at Huddersfield, Yeshwanth Pulijala, doctoral researcher at Huddersfield, and Prof. Eunice Ma, now at the University. from Falmouth. For their research, they visited seven dental schools in India in early 2017 to test their virtual reality-based training materials on the students. The experience gained during this visit contributed to the doctorates of both researchers and ultimately led to the involvement of Professor Peebles and Matthew Pears in the new report.

Professor Peebles explained, “This is about developing a set of principles and guidelines for the use of immersive technology in medical treatment. Immersive technology is increasingly popular and as the technology advances it becomes clear that there is great potential to make training more accessible and effective.

“However, it is important that research is driven by user needs and existing evidence rather than technology. Rather than thinking “we have a new VR or augmented reality kit, what can we do with it? We should look at the problem that needs to be solved: what are the learning needs, so how do we use technology to solve it?

“Developing immersive training materials can be time consuming and difficult to assess properly. It’s hard to get surgeons and medical students to take the time to test your VR training. In our case, we were fortunate enough to have a surgeon, Professor Ashraf Ayoub, Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Glasgow, who allowed us to film a surgery which was then turned into a 3D environment to train students in the situation. awareness in the operating room.

Future research

Professor Peebles hopes the work done so far will provide a basis for future investigations to help use VR and immersive technology to their full potential.

“Conducting these kinds of studies is difficult to do well, especially obtaining sufficient quantitative data to allow them to be rigorously evaluated.

“As the report recommends, more collaboration is needed to pool technological and intellectual resources, to try to develop a set of standards and a community that work together to stimulate and improve research in this area,” added the Professor Peebles.