Virtual Reality Applications in Medicine During the COVID-19 Pandemic: PRISMA Systematic Review (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the adoption rate of virtual reality in medicine has seen a massive rise. Many hospitals and medical universities rushed to implement virtual reality to remotely provide medical treatment or medical education and training. OBJECTIVE This systematic review aimed to describe the literature on virtual reality applications during the COVID-19 crisis to treat mental and physical health conditions and for medical education and training. METHODS A systematic search of the literature was made following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines. It was pre-registered in the International Platform of Registered Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols (INPLASY)— INPLASY202190108. The search databases were PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Medline. The search string was: [(“virtual reality”)] AND [(“COVID-19”)]. RESULTS N=44 studies met inclusion criteria during the period 2020 – 2021. CONCLUSIONS Findings show the benefit of virtual reality for treating several mental health conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, including stress, anxiety, and depression, and for cognitive rehabilitation. Besides, VR was useful to promote physical exercise and for the management of chronic pain. As regards education and training, virtual reality resulted an effective learning tool during the COVID-19 pandemic in many medical areas such as nursing, pediatry,cardiology, and urology. The majority of the retrieved studies recruited young adults. Studies showed the usefulness of VR for the treatment of health problems and for medical education and training both in the format with high immersion (i.e., immersive VR) and in that with a low level of immersion (i.e., desktop VR). Various VR systems (i.e., PC-based, mobile, standalone) and contents (i.e., 360° videos and photos, virtual environments, VR games, embodied virtual agents) showed positive results. Finally, VR has been used successfully in both face-to-face and remote trials.

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Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality-based Head-Mounted Devices for Medical Education: A Systematic Review (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.29080 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sandra Barteit ◽

Lucia Lanfermann ◽

Till Bärnighausen ◽

Florian Neuhann ◽

Claudia Beiersmann

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Medical Education ◽

Virtual Reality ◽

Quantitative Methods ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Small Scale ◽

Middle Income ◽

Beneficial Effects ◽

And Training

BACKGROUND Augmented (AR), mixed (MR) and virtual reality (VR), realized as head-mounted devices (HMDs), may open up new ways of teaching medical content including in low-resource settings. OBJECTIVE This review examines the effectiveness of AR and VR HMDs for medical education, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. METHODS A systematic review was conducted according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) and Cochrane guidelines. Seven medical databases were searched for peer-reviewed publications from 1st January 2014 to 31st May 2019. An extensive search was carried out to examine relevant literature using three broad terms ‘extended reality (XR)’ which comprises the concepts of AR, MR, and VR, ‘medicine' and ‘education'. RESULTS A total of 27 studies were included. The participants included all types of healthcare professionals, especially medical students. AR and VR implemented with HMDs was most often used for training in the fields of surgery and anatomy. A various range of study designs was employed whereby quantitative methods were clearly dominant. Training with AR- and VR-based HMDs was perceived as salient and motivating, it engaged the user in the learning process. In the majority of studies (63%) HMD-based interventions were deemed effective, thus indicating potential benefits of HMDs for LMICs. A small number of included studies (15%) indicated that HMDs were effective for certain aspects of medical skills and knowledge learning and training, while other studies suggested that HMDs were only viable as an additional teaching tool (15%). Only two studies (7%) found that there was no prove of effectiveness for using HMDs. CONCLUSIONS The majority of included studies suggest that XR-based HMDs have beneficial effects for medical education. Studies showed non-inferior results if compared to conventional teaching and training, but users showed more enthusiasm and enjoyment. HMDs enable repeated practice without adverse effects on the patient in various medical disciplines. However, many HMD-based interventions were small-scale and conducted as short-termed pilots. Therefore, it is key to rigorously evaluate XR-based HMDs with AR and VR implementations in LMICs to better understand the strengths and shortcomings of HMDs for medical education in LMICs contexts.

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