Today’s students have the advantage of technology that enables them to gain more skills in a no-risk environment before they head out in the real world and to have tools that aid them in diagnostics and monitoring.

However, those educational aids don’t train medical staff in how to respond to a patient who, say, is facing a difficult diagnosis, or how to read a patient’s face and movements to assess pain levels.

While high-tech manikins can help students improve their interpersonal skills by simulating a real patient, standardized patients (SP), or patient actors, have become the gold standard in helping students master this key area of their learning.

If you want to add immersive learning to your curriculum or want to upgrade from Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) options, you may have to justify the investment in Extended Reality (XR) and Mixed Reality (MR) devices. 

This might be particularly challenging heading into 2021, as universities cope with the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. 

For instructors and students in healthcare fields, though, the investment in XR pays off in both quality of education and a favorable cost-benefit analysis when compared to other types of simulation teaching and training.

In today’s ultra-connected world, we’re used to having Zoom conversations with family and colleagues, opening Spotify to check out artists from around the world and using Google Translate to access content in any language.

Concerts and sporting events are among the few events that still bring large crowds together — as in up to 100,000 people — to share space, energy, camaraderie and just fun. Analog has been the way to go for most consumers, even as avant-garde companies started to experiment with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). After all, it’s the atmosphere of being with fellow fans that you can’t recreate effectively at home.

With more and more students facing uncertainties around tuition for online courses and the remote learning environments as we embark on the Fall 2020 school year, how can educators, particularly in fields that require off-the-page educational experiences (such as medicine) deliver an improved student experience? 

Dane Axelgard, VP Sales, North America at GIGXR, outlined how and why immersive learning is more vital than ever for healthcare training in 2020 in his presentation for the “Your Guide to Virtual Reality Healthcare Applications, Products and Services” virtual conference, co-hosted by IVRHA and BehaVR this past month.

Extended reality (XR) technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) are transformative tools that are changing the way students access key information and skills in medical programs. Unlike lecture, books or video, XR allows students to master material through interactivity and deeper exploration.

Today's educators are constantly looking for new interactive tools to engage students. Virtual Reality (VR) has been recognized for some time as a key technology that can bring the educational experience to the next level, while Extended Reality (XR), which incorporates VR and Augmented Reality (AR), has become the new cutting edge of learning.

Until recently, the focus of Extended Reality (XR) technologies, which encompasses Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality, has been to provide simulated audiovisual experiences in a physical space. And while the industry is constantly looking to improve how we see and hear in the XR world, there are new technologies, such as haptics, that are bringing the sense of touch into the virtual space as well.

In our E-book: Immersive Technologies in Healthcare Training, GIGXR explores the expansion of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities in the healthcare industry.  We look at the current state and development of these Extended Realities (XR) and how learning and teaching can be enhanced with these resources.

Extended reality (XR) solutions provide unique immersive experiences that allow staff and students to engage and collaborate better, and learn at a pace that matches their learning styles. These technologies can aid learning and training at reduced costs and with positive ROI.