Boston, MA. – We continue to see virtual reality (VR) branching away from the traditional gaming platform and moving into the healthcare space. Companies are using the technology to develop applications for doctors to use with patients experiencing depression and drug-free alternatives to managing pain, just to name a few.
SyncThink just added another use for VR, detecting concussions in real time. Lead by Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, director of the Concussion and Brain Performance Center at Stanford, EYE-SYNC, is an advanced cognitive assessment tool that uses VR to produce metrics around the subject’s eye-tracking performance in 60 seconds or less. By following a simple dot around a circle, a physician can quickly determine if someone’s brain is out of sync and needs to be pulled from a game or can return.
Why this matters –
Dating back to the 50’s (and some argue VR began in the late 30’s), this technology has been evolving for sometime. To see it continually pop-up in healthcare is a great indication of the adoption of emerging technology as a whole within healthcare and to see the additional applications of VR. It is also great to see what was originally developed for the gaming platform to evolving into ‘edutainment’ – ‘gamification’ with an educational impact!
