Palliative care focuses on relieving and managing symptoms associated with serious illness and improving a patient’s quality of life. It’s often used alongside other medical and nonpharmacologic treatments and can be provided at any stage of an illness.
Palliative care may benefit patients with a variety of chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart failure, dementia and Parkison’s disease.
“VR has the potential to be an alternative therapy that benefits patients by decreasing symptom burden while increasing quality of life,” says Dr. Shega.
Some palliative care patients experience physical limitations that can make travel difficult or impossible, adds Samuel Haddad, an engineering director at Design Interactive, an extended reality (XR) company that specializes in building XR ecosystems, and the software engineer lead for a palliative care VR project with St. Francis Reflections Lifestage Care in Florida.
VR allows palliative care patients to explore different environments and scenery based on individual preferences, providing an alternative setting from their routine environment and allowing them to engage in sights and sounds that provide a much-needed distraction from their illness and help occupy the brain in a positive way.
For example, patients may experience calming beaches, a tour of the Washington, D.C. monuments and more. Many VR systems also allows family members to record experiences with a 360-degree camera and upload those videos into an app or website, giving the patient the ability to experience personal events they would otherwise not be able to attend, he explains.
“With the ability to personalize a patient’s VR experience, we can do more than bring the world to our patients—we are able to give our patients those ‘what matters most’ moments without additional physical stress,” says Kristie Henry-Roling, an employee engagement manager involved in the VR program at St. Francis Reflections Lifestage Care in Florida.
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