Yesterday, the Empathetic Media Health team took delivery of several new Meta Quest 3 headsets and we immediately set about testing them – in advance of upcoming client meetings. We very rapidly realised that the Meta Quest 3 is a game-changer, bringing a breath of fresh air to the immersive tech scene. This new headset redefines the experience of wearing … Read More
Immersive Healthcare: The Revolution of Medical Training Through VR, AR, and MR Simulations
In the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare, the convergence of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) is ushering in a new era for medical training. These immersive technologies are poised to redefine the way medical professionals learn and hone their skills, presenting a multitude of benefits that extend from the safety of training environments to the exploration … Read More
Virtual Reality for Mental Health
Mental health has become one of society’s biggest issues with around one in seven people now taking antidepressants. Whether this is caused by events such as pandemics, wars and economic difficulties, social media reporting of such events or simply a greater awareness and tendency to self-diagnose, there is a tsunami of potentially ill people in need of therapy. There is … Read More
Are We Living in a Virtual Reality?
The idea that our human experience might be a virtual reality creation, produced by higher beings or our future selves, might sound like the plot of a science fiction novel or something straight out of the Matrix! However, recent advances in technology have given this theory a fascinating twist. Virtual reality (VR) experiences that we can create ourselves are now … Read More
Meet the new Meta Quest 3 Headset: A Bold Step Towards Mixed Reality
Earlier this week, at the start of the annual Meta Connect developer conference, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed the details of the much-awaited Meta Quest 3 virtual reality headset. Like previous versions of the headset, the Quest 3 will cover the wearer’s eyes like a pair of ski googles, with spatial audio piped from embedded speakers in the device’s … Read More
The (R)evolution of Virtual Reality in Medicine and Pharma: from Outsider to Insider
Virtual Reality (VR) has made extraordinary progress since its inception, moving beyond the early days of 360-degree videos to the interactive, standalone (not requiring an external PC, just the headset) VR experiences we enjoy today. Companies like Meta (formerly Facebook) have been at the forefront of this transformation, continually investing in VR technology and integration across various sectors, including healthcare. … Read More
How are large pharma companies using immersive technologies?
As immersive technology becomes more widespread, here are a few examples of large pharmaceutical companies using it for training of HCPs and patients as well as for R&D. This list doesn’t represent an exhaustive account of all use cases but gives a flavor of what’s happening in the sector. Pfizer: Pfizer has been using VR for training purposes. They developed … Read More
What’s New in Immersive Tech – February 2023
Immersive tech, if seen as the latest tool in an evolutionary process which started with cave-painting and has come to dominate the media landscape since the turn of the millennium, is increasingly well-adapted to communicating cutting-edge advances in medical practice. The ability for a viewer to immerse themselves in a virtual world in which information about treatments and patients is … Read More
The Past 12 Months at Empathetic Media Health
The past 12 months at Empathetic Media Health has been a fascinating journey with brand new clients from US, Japan, UK, Ireland and projects in some of the most exciting areas of healthcare. The launch of the new Oculus Quest headset in 2019 meant that we were able to introduce mobile, interactive, immersive VR experiences to our clients in gene … Read More
Literature Review: Defining (and measuring) Empathy
Here’s an excerpt from one of the earlier drafts of our white paper on the link between cinematic vr and empathy, published as a white paper by the Tow Institute. Read that paper here. The purpose of this post is to contextualize the study within the respective fields of VR and psychology, drawing on empathy research published in academic journals, … Read More