Abstract

VIRTUAL REALITY IN HEALTHCARE EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF ITS DEVELOPMENT, APPLICATIONS AND CHALLENGES.

Sultan Muhammad Salahudeen, *Dr. A. Srinivasa Rao, Dr. Muzibunnisa Abdul Hathi Begam, Muhammad Hasan, Dr. Mohammed Gousuddin

ABSTRACT

Virtual Reality (VR) has made extensive inroads into both the consumer and professional sphere of life worldwide. In the education sector, virtual reality (VR) offers learners an immersive and interactive learning experience, enabling them to understand challenging concepts and ideas more efficiently. As VR has developed into a very useful technology, its overall practicality for use in education has tremendously increased over the years. However, due to the continuous and enormous evolution of the technology, the field of education struggles to stay informed of the latest advancements, changing affordances, and pedagogical applications. The usefulness of VR is multifaceted, and its application is ranging from the entertainment industry to the highly sophisticated space technology. The VR applications in healthcare is really promising and it is efficiently used to help children with autism, postnatal depression, and anxiety, and even to help patients with strokes recover. The application of VR to treat the patients with injury or illness are already into practice. However still there are unanswered questions that need to be addressed. The advances and technological innovations in healthcare sectors have occurred throughout history, continually advancing in the diagnosis and management of many diseases. These include the first vaccine for smallpox in the 18th century, the development of antibiotics in the 1920s and the world‟s first organ transplant three decades later. With the technological advances in many spheres the healthcare education namely Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy and other allied fields is employing more of the innovative technologies including the VR in the current century and it has taken unprecedent scale.

Keywords: Virtual reality, Healthcare education, simulation, innovation.