Virtual reality is seeing increasing usage in healthcare scenarios, but these use cases are primarily of a training-related nature. A recent study from the University of Birmingham is very much along similar lines. It suggests that VR can be an ideal tool to help General Practitioners (family doctors) detect signs of child abuse.
The role of a GP requires a huge range of soft skills, and whilst some of these are relatively easy to teach, others are much harder, especially for new doctors who lack experience. The ability to spot a child who might be suffering from abuse is one of those hard to teach skills.
The researchers built a virtual reality environment that was designed to replicate a GP’s surgery. Each user could then be presented with a range of virtual patients that they interacted with in the same way they would during a real consultation.
Put to the test
One of these scenarios saw the GP presented with a patient with a fairly complex medical condition. The patient had his son with him, who he acted aggressively towards. Whilst this is a fairly obvious clue, some users were presented with slightly more subtle indicators that something was wrong.
Each character in the animation was originally played by a professional actor, whose movements were captured by motion capture technology. Animation and dialogue were then added on top.
The system was tested on 64 doctors of varying levels of experience, with each participant tested to see whether their ability to detect child safety concerns improved, especially when the signals were subtle. This level of understanding was gauged via the quality of the note left by the doctor at the end of each virtual consultation. Each note was reviewed by a panel of experts on child safety matters, with the panel hoping to reflect the fact that a single ‘right’ answer is largely impossible.
“Our results also showed that GPs who are less stressed, less neurotic, more agreeable and extroverted tend to be better at raising potential child abuse issues in their notes. These results not only indicate the considerable potential of virtual reality as a training tool—they also highlight fruitful avenues for further research and potential strategies to support GPs in their dealing with highly sensitive, emotionally charged situations,” the researchers say.
The team believe that by using virtual reality, they have complete control over the characters, which allows their behavior to be subtly altered as required. The initial tests suggest this had a big impact, as doctors were not as effective at picking up less obvious behavioral clues. What’s more, the technology also allows them to create scenarios that would be unethical to recreate using child actors.
They believe this is the first time virtual reality has been used for such a purpose, and they’re confident that it will be effective when used in real-life training scenarios. The next step is to make that reality.
