6 Healthcare Examples Of Virtual, Augmented And Mixed Reality

Lately, there has been a tendency in the tech world to adopt “new” realities in their midst. Meta has a branch dedicated to developing virtual reality (VR) hardware and software; earlier this year HTC unveiled its new augmented reality (AR) glasses; while Apple is reportedly gearing up to launch a mixed reality (MR) headset.

Collectively, VR, AR and MR fall under the umbrella term of extended reality (XR), which analysts believe holds the potential to be the next major computing platform. Such potentials have spillover effects into the medical field through digital health approaches, and healthcare practice is already adopting such XR approaches. We’ll take a look at examples of each, but first, let’s get acquainted with those “new realities” through the following:

Term	What it does
Virtual Reality (VR)	Completely shields the physical world from the user and immerses them in an interactive virtual environment
Augmented Reality (AR)	Superimposes the physical environment with virtual elements that have limited interaction
Mixed Reality (MR)	Merges aspects from both VR and AR to incorporate virtual elements into the physical world with a wide range of interaction
Extended Reality (XR)	An umbrella term for technologies including VR, AR and MR

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