Digital Health 101: How Virtual Reality is Being Used Towards Health Care

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University just launched a new lecture series called Digital Health 101. This is to offer focus on how to incorporate digital health into the operations of Downstate. This course wants to make learning more flexible, allowing them to grasp what is being taught at the student’s pace.

VR simulations are one of the things that Brian Gillett, M.D. is passionate about because it allows the students to work in an environment and be more comfortable in a clinical setting before working on real patients. He breaks down the three different kinds of reality.

PR - Physical Reality is the world that we live in every day. The classroom is a good example of this.

AR – Augmented Reality such as your phone. It is on the surface, but you can easily decipher between our physical reality and digital reality.

VR – Virtual Reality completely removes you from your world into another world.

MR – Mixed Reality is a mix between AR and VR. Physical and Virtual reality can co-exist with each other.

In Mixed Reality, you can use real objects from our physical reality and interact with them. But you can do more interactions with the physical object in a virtual reality setting. So it allows you to learn how the object works and to simulate a clinical environment, anywhere you are. This tool can be used to minimize malpractice suits in the future because those in the medical field need the experience and comfort to perform well.

MR solves the problem with the complexity of learning because it combines eLearning, which reaches a wider audience than the standard classroom, and combines it with the Mannequin Simulation, which allows students to work in a simulated environment during practicing with what they learned in a safe environment.

The best thing about Mixed Reality learning is that it gives you the ability to learn at any time or place. This way of learning may not be for everyone, but it would be a great tool for the student who is a self-starter and may want to learn and practice in a non-traditional setting.

To learn more about training in the Digital Age, view the rest of the video from DownstateTV on Youtube here.