Tanner B. VR is Good for Your Health: The Health Promotion, Prevention, and Treatment Potential of VR. East Coast Game Conference; 2018 April 19; Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.

1. VR IS GOOD FOR YOUR
HEALTH
The Health Promotion, Prevention, and
Treatment Potential of VR Games
Brad Tanner, MD
HealthImpact.Studio
Chapel Hill, NC

2. Take Home Message
Headset based immersive virtual
reality technology offers a
compelling opportunity to engage
and motivate youth, adolescents,
emerging adults, and adults in game
experiences that impact health-
related understanding, decision-
making, skills and behaviors.

3. Where We are Going
Where is the Money?
Games Build Healthy Behaviors Already
Go over existing applications of virtual
reality to address health topics and
rethink them as games.

4. Bradley Tanner, MD
Physician by Training
Experience in Online Training and
Behavior Change
Now: Studio Head, HealthImpact.studio
Disclosure: Not selling a product. Selling a
vision

5. HealthImpact.Studio
Goal: Create games that can impact
health.
Strategy: Start from an interesting game
concept and add health impact on top of
that.

6. Where is the Money - Globally?

7. Where is the Money in the US?
Gaming
US
Revenue
2017
$36 Billion
2017 $36 Billion2016 $30 Billion

8. Perspective
Gaming
US
Revenue
2017
$36 Billion

9. Gaming vs. Expenditure on
Healthcare
Health
Care
US
Revenue
2015
$3205
Billion

10. Games Build Healthy Behaviors Already
 Novel Experience/Narratives
 Quick Decision Making
 Collaboration
 Focus on improvement and challenge and
growth
 Team Building
 Eye-Hand Coordination
 3D visualization and modeling
 Understanding Cause and Effect

11. Where We are Going
1) Review Examples of VR use in
Healthcare
2) Brainstorm how one could accomplish
the same end goal and achieve the same
impact but in a gaming framework versus
the more typical experiential framework.

12. VR and Medicine/Health
1) Controlling acute and chronic pain including
cancer, burn, and phantom limb pain,
2) Countering anxiety including phobias and
PTSD with exposure, relaxation, and
mindfulness
3) Rejecting cues in a virtual environment and
impacting addiction
4) Enhancing amputee rehabilitation and
correcting misperceptions of body image
countered by virtual self-imaging.

13. Gaming Adds Value
1) Learner control and self-determination
2) Self-expression and creativity and drives
intrinsic motivation
3) Role-playing in VR engages the participant in a
cycle of practicing change
4) Immersion instills flow or a sense of
timelessness and focuses on the game at hand

14. Gaming Adds Value - Learner Control
Learner control and self-determination
Choices, decision-making opportunities (e.g.,
quick, medium, slow), feedback, levels of
improvement, and the potential for
success/mastery demonstration enable health-
related impact.

15. Gaming Adds Value – Self Expression
Self-expression and creativity and drives intrinsic
motivation to address unfamiliar topics and
instills

skills

understanding,

empowerment,

confidence necessary for a lifestyle change and
sustained effort during treatment.

16. Gaming Adds Value - Engaging
Role-playing in VR engages the participant in a
cycle of practicing change by

initial self-reflection,

taking action,

post-action reflection,

concluding,

planning that promotes longer-term real-world
behavioral change.

17. Gaming Adds Value - Immersion
Immersion instills flow or a sense of
timelessness and focuses on the game at hand
that

optimizes cognitive load,

matching skills to challenge

complements behavior change theories.
Intentional small breaks in flow will allow an
opportunity for reflection.

18. Recap - Where We are Going
1) Review Examples of VR use in
Healthcare
2) Brainstorm how one could accomplish
the same end goal and achieve the same
impact but in a gaming framework versus
the more typical experiential framework.

19. An Example

20. Why Don’t People Do This?
1) Physicians are not a terribly innovative
lot
2) Funding Agencies are even more
cautious.
Blast out your ideas!

21. VR – Pain
1)Li Lan, Yu Fei, Shi Dongquan, et al.
Application of virtual reality technology in clinical medicine. Am J Transl
Res. September 15, 2017;9(9):3867-3880.
2)Koo Kyo-in, Park Dae Kwon, Youm Yoon Seok, Cho Sung Do, Hwang
Chang Ho.
Enhanced Reality Showing Long-Lasting Analgesia after Total Knee Arth
roplasty: Prospective, Randomized Clinical Trial
. Sci Rep. February 5, 2018;8. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-20260-0.

22. VR - Cancer Treatment
Chirico A et al.
Virtual Reality in Health System: Beyond Entertainment. A
Mini-Review on the Efficacy of VR During Cancer Treatment
. - PubMed - NCBI

23. VR - Anxiety
Riva Giuseppe, Baños Rosa
M, Botella Cristina,
Mantovani Fabrizia, Gaggioli
Andrea.
Transforming Experience: T
he Potential of Augmented
Reality and Virtual Reality f
or Enhancing Personal and
Clinical Change
. Front Psychiatry. September
30, 2016;7.
doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2016.0016
4
.
Maples-Keller Jessica L,
Bunnell Brian E, Kim Sae-
Jin, Rothbaum Barbara O.
The Use of Virtual Reality T
echnology in the Treatment
of Anxiety and Other Psychi
atric Disorders
. Harv Rev Psychiatry. June
2017;25(3):103-113.
doi:10.1097/HRP.000000000
0000138
.
Malbos E. , et al.
Virtual reality in the treatm
ent of mental disorders
.

24. VR and Surgical Training

25. VR and Disease Understanding

26. HealthImpact.Studio
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