Practice Management Alert

Question: I often treat elderly patients and have read a bit about nursing homes using new technologies to provide residents with more engagement beyond their everyday experience in their facilities. This is all new to me, especially the acronyms: What are the differences between VR, AR, and XR technologies?

Oregon Subscriber

Answer: Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR or XR) are three technologies that have gained a lot of ground in healthcare in recent years; however, there are distinct differences between them.

With VR, the user puts on a headset and becomes immersed in the environment on the headset’s screen. The technology gives the user the feeling that they’re somewhere completely different from the room they’re standing in. As the user turns their head and moves around the room, they’ll see the virtual space as if they were physically there.

Healthcare providers will prescribe VR as a therapy for patients who suffer from chronic pain or to distract patients during procedures or in a nursing home or other facility, like you mention.

AR adds virtual elements to your existing vision. An example of this is turning on a filter on your smartphone camera where a cat’s face is superimposed on your image. In healthcare settings, physicians can use smart glasses where crucial information about the patient is displayed on the glasses for only the user’s eyes.