Virtual Reality Clinical Research: Promises and Challenges (Preprint)

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) therapy has been explored as a therapeutic approach in a number of medical applications, where three dimensional virtual environments can be explored in real time. Some significant successes have been claimed. A number of studies have asserted positive outcome for patients using VR for clinical conditions such as anxiety disorders, addictions, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, stroke rehabilitation, and pain management. Nevertheless, the implementation of clinical VR research outside of the laboratory presents many clinical challenges. This paper explores some of the key issues in implementing clinical VR research including theoretical ambiguity and immaturity, a lack of technical standards, problems of media vs. medium, practical in-vivo issues and costs. It is argued that careful attention to addressing these issues in research design and pilot studies are needed, in order to make clinical VR research more rigorous and meaningful.