A huge number of changes are looming in the near digital future. In fact, many changes have been installed in our lives without giving us time to process them. The changes capable of causing virtual reality in the area of health are surprising and often unimaginable. Through the following lines, we will take a journey through the transformations in the way of taking care of our health that virtual reality proposes and what these changes represent in our lifestyle.
Virtual reality allows a user to interact and immerse themselves in a superficially created environment. This technology is based on the multisensory interactive generation of stimuli with the aim of maintaining a complete sensation of immersion in the real world. Although this technology is usually related to 3D technology, they are two different tools.
While virtual reality recreates a “real” environment in which the person who uses it feels part of that world and believes that they are in a virtual environment different from the physical one; 3D simulation is based on three-dimensional projection on two-dimensional screens. In other words, virtual reality is characterized by the illusion of participation in a synthetic environment beyond the observation of it proposed by 3D technology.
The innovative technology of virtual reality has already been used in the area of medicine, obtaining marvelous results in fields such as psychology, virtual therapies for the treatment of phobias, cognitive and motor rehabilitation in patients with brain damage, and surgeries, among others.
Among the future applications of virtual reality to the world of preventive health, we can highlight a study carried out at Stanford University that consisted of creating a virtual patient in which the person could see the changes produced in vivo in their own body if You will lose weight, which according to this research may have an influence on the decision of patients to change their eating habits.
This same creation of virtual patient prototypes can also be used to help health professionals obtain a more accurate diagnosis of their patient pathology. The preventive importance of this application is that it will allow better visualization of the internal anatomy of the patient than that provided by conventional images and better preoperative knowledge that will allow the doctor to plan a much more specific treatment. This technique will improve the diagnosis of diseases and will even be able to guide the doctor during surgery.
Just as NASA is working with this technology so that scientists can travel to Mars without leaving their office, in the near future you will have the opportunity to be treated by the best doctors in the world without having to travel, all thanks to the technology provided by virtual reality.
Without a doubt, this technology is for everything. Therefore, it will change our way of observing reality in every way. For example, in 2014 researchers from a Mexican university created a virtual space that allows the reconstruction of buildings belonging to the history and culture of their city as a way of bringing society closer to recognizing their historical monuments. Also, our way of watching movies, the way we relate to others, the way in which the next generations will have fun and educate themselves and many other fields will have great innovations applied to this technology.
A new reality has arrived in which immersing ourselves will be of great benefit to our health and our lifestyle, virtual reality is here to stay.
