Editorial: VR/AR and wellbeing: The use of immersive technologies in promoting health outcomes
Benjamin Junting Li, Jorge F. Peña, Younbo Jung · Frontiers in Virtual Reality · 2023
Editorial on the Research Topic VR/AR and wellbeing: The use of immersive technologies in promoting health outcomes Virtual reality (VR) technologies have been used as a tool in various domains with promising results (Jarrold et al., 2013;Ahn et al., 2014;Hamilton et al., 2021;Peña et al., 2020;Meijers et al., 2021).We were interested in the use of VR to promote health outcomes, particularly with COVID-19 throwing a spanner in daily routines.The pandemic saw a drastic reduction in social and outdoor activities such as exercising, travel and mingling, and immersive technologies provided a means for many to improve their physical and mental wellbeing.The goal of this Research Topic was to highlight insightful uses of immersive technologies for wellbeing and understand the feasibility and efficacy of these technologies on personal health outcomes.Tarrant et al. conducted a study at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring if a mobile VR plus neurofeedback (VR + NF) meditation experience was more effective in improving moods healthcare workers as compared to an audio-only meditation tool.While the audio-only meditation tool saw no significant changes in the dependent variables, participants in the VR + NF group reported significant decreases in fatigue, confusion and vigor, and significant increases in calmness and happiness.These results suggest that in a time where healthcare workers are at heightened levels of stress and anxiety, immersive technologybased meditation tools can be an effective tool to reduce negative mood states within the healthcare environment.It will be interesting to see if immersive tools like these will be helpful in the long-term and/or see greater adoption in healthcare settings, where healthcare workers are increasingly spending the bulk of their daily lives.With the pandemic causing a challenge for physical therapists to execute physical rehabilitation for their patients, Elor et al. interviewed 130 physical rehabilitation professionals to understand their perceptions of existing shortcomings of physical therapy mediums and the opportunities of using VR technologies to promote patient evaluation and rehabilitation.Their findings show that existing telehealth solutions are inadequate, with interviewees reporting having difficulties assessing patients' range of motion and strength, as they lost the ability to freely examine patients' movements and injuries.One outcome that arose was that physical therapists ended up giving more verbal advice, acting as "life coaches" to their patients, rather than conducting actual physical rehabilitation.Most agreed that immersive technologies will allow for more effective physical therapy as they allow for a stronger sense of