Medical

The ability to act and interact remotely from a patient by making use of VR technology.

VR is especially applicable in simulations for surgical training. VR allows surgeons to practice hundreds of procedures prior to patient contact, and the practice carries no risk to live patients.

A surgical planning device takes actual physical data from an individual patient and combines it with computer-generated data, incorporating real-time interaction with computer graphics that mimic a patients anatomy.

The area of telemedicine that overlaps Virtual Reality is the use of 'telepresent' medical experts, who will be given the ability to act and interact remotely from a patient by making use of VR technology. Ideally, this will reduce the cost of medical practice and bring expertise into remote areas. Telemedicine will also include telesurgery - the provision of VR-based systems to enable telepresent surgeons to perform surgery on remote patients.

VR surgical simulation development has been concentrated on Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), partly because the paradigm for MIS already involves a physician looking at a monitor.

VR is especially applicable in simulations for surgical training. VR allows surgeons to practice hundreds of procedures prior to patient contact, and the practice carries no risk to live patients. Since doctors with less experience are in general more likely to produce errors, VR simulations could theoretically reduce physician error.