How is the metaverse changing surgery? We explain: Film supported by Mishcon de Reya
worlds for volunteers in their labs since the 1990s. Rather as an aircraft simulator can train and test pilots in a wide variety of settings, virtual worlds allow psychologists and neuroscientists to watch people’s cognitive and emotional responses in situations that are difficult to set up or control in the real world. But the technology has usually been too clunky and expensive for widespread clinical use.
Though each condition is unique, researchers have found common ground rules for designing virtual experiences that work: therapists need to be in control of the scene, deciding what a patient sees and hears in order to modify the strength of the fearful stimulus; the therapy works best when the patient is embodied within an avatar, rather than floating, so that they feel present within the scene; and the patient needs agency, so that they can leave the scene if it gets too overwhelming for them.
For doctors, virtual environments also provide a risk-free way to practise important procedures. Surgeons operate in high-pressure environments with a lot of cognitive demands. “You’ve got to learn very rapidly, and you’ve got to make decisions under time pressure, with millimetre precision,” says Faisal Mushtaq, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Leeds in England.
Medical uses for computer simulations are promising, but how useful they are will take time to evaluate. That will require robust clinical trials and discussions of frameworks for data protection on technologies that could, if their potential is achieved, become a new type of medical device.
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