A Virtual Reality–Based App to Educate Health Care Professionals and Medical Students About Inflammatory Arthritis: Feasibility Study

Abstract

Background Inflammatory arthritides (IA) such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis are disorders that can be difficult to comprehend for health professionals and students in terms of the heterogeneity of clinical symptoms and pathologies. New didactic approaches using innovative technologies such as virtual reality (VR) apps could be helpful to demonstrate disease manifestations as well as joint pathologies in a more comprehensive manner. However, the potential of using a VR education concept in IA has not yet been evaluated. Objective We evaluated the feasibility of a VR app to educate health care professionals and medical students about IA. Methods We developed a VR app using data from IA patients as well as 2D and 3D-visualized pathological joints from X-ray and computed tomography–generated images. This VR app (Rheumality) allows the user to interact with representative arthritic joint and bone pathologies of patients with IA. In a consensus meeting, an online questionnaire was designed to collect basic demographic data (age, sex); profession of the participants; and their feedback on the general impression, knowledge gain, and potential areas of application of the VR app. The VR app was subsequently tested and evaluated by health care professionals (physicians, researchers, and other professionals) and medical students at predefined events (two annual rheumatology conferences and academic teaching seminars at two sites in Germany). To explore associations between categorical variables, the χ2 or Fisher test was used as appropriate. Two-sided P values ≤.05 were regarded as significant. Results A total of 125 individuals participated in this study. Among them, 56% of the participants identified as female, 43% identified as male, and 1% identified as nonbinary; 59% of the participants were 18-30 years of age, 18% were 31-40 years old, 10% were 41-50 years old, 8% were 51-60 years old, and 5% were 61-70 years old. The participants (N=125) rated the VR app as excellent, with a mean rating of 9.0 (SD 1.2) out of 10, and many participants would recommend use of the app, with a mean recommendation score of 3.2 (SD 1.1) out of 4. A large majority (120/125, 96.0%) stated that the presentation of pathological bone formation improves understanding of the disease. We did not find any association between participant characteristics and evaluation of the VR experience or recommendation scores. Conclusions The data show that IA-targeting innovative teaching approaches based on VR technology are feasible.

Virtual Simulation in Undergraduate Medical Education: A Scoping Review of Recent Practice

“…Despite the diversification of virtual simulators/platforms/systems used in undergraduate medical education, we found that 48 (52%) studies ( 18 , 22 , 23 , 27 – 31 , 33 – 35 , 37 – 39 , 42 , 44 – 48 , 50 , 52 , 54 , 57 – 67 , 71 , 72 , 75 , 78 , 81 – 84 , 93 , 96 , 99 , 101 , 103 , 105 ) reported the immersive VR application, which is characterized by the use of VR equipment consisting of head-mounted displays (headsets or goggles) and/or hand controllers. This finding suggested that VR might be a typical and popular representative of modern VS technology used in medical education.…”

“…In addition to the above learning contexts and practical aspects, the remaining 18 articles ( 15 , 21 , 24 , 27 , 40 , 41 , 43 , 54 , 73 , 77 , 83 , 87 , 89 , 95 , 100 , 102 , 103 , 105 ) reported the integration of VS into other case-based learning experiences in virtual patient-care settings. Despite the diversity of virtual patient systems and clinical scenarios, these studies generally showed that VS-integrated case-based learning as a feasible teaching approach ( 54 ) could result in students’ learning gains, retention of information, and transfer of knowledge to clinical application ( 89 , 95 , 100 , 102 ), help future physicians improve diagnostic accuracy thus enhance the clinical reasoning teaching ( 15 , 27 , 43 ), extend students’ preparedness level for their future clinical experiences ( 40 , 83 ), facilitate empathy ( 24 ), cultural competence ( 77 ) and comprehensive clinical skills such as communication-based skills ( 21 ), clinical decision-making skills ( 78 ) within undergraduate medical education, and improve students’ confidence in managing clinical scenarios ( 41 ), thus was highly received by students ( 89 , 95 , 105 ).…”

Cinematic rendering in rheumatic diseases—Photorealistic depiction of pathologies improves disease understanding for patients

“…Demonstration of such images to patients is easy, fast and therefore feasible in daily clinical practice. It is also conceivable that in the future this data cannot only be offered via images but also through immersive technologies such as augmented reality, mixed reality (like Hololens) or virtual reality* ( 16 , 17 ). This might even enhance the proven effect of those immersive applications in the context of teaching medical students or health care professionals improve their knowledge and disease understanding and thus empathize the patients’ symptoms and functional disabilities.…”

“Rheuma (be-)greifen”— A multimodal teaching concept to improve rheumatology education for medical students

“…Dabei wurde das System für die VR-Applikation „Rheumality©“ (Lilly Deutschland GmbH, Bad Homburg v. d. H., Deutschland) fest in den Lehrräumen des SkillsLabs installiert, und die Tutorinnen und Tutoren wurden für die selbstständige Anwendung instruiert. Eine in diesem Zusammenhang veröffentlichte Publikation unserer Arbeitsgruppe zeigte, wie eine erste Version unserer Applikation, die 2‑D- und 3‑D-Daten der pathologischen Gelenke von echten Patientinnen und Patienten mit rheumatoider Arthritis und Psoriasisarthritis in verschiedenen Stadien der Krankheit zum besseren Verständnis der Erkrankungsbilder – nicht nur bei Medizinstudierenden, sondern auch bei Patientinnen und Patienten und sogar bei Rheumatologinnen und Rheumatologen in der Weiterbildung – führt [ 6 , 9 ]. Auf Grundlage dieses wertvollen Feedbacks wird fortlaufend der Funktionsumfang der Applikation erweitert.…”