Strokes affect a vast number of people every year. The speed with which medical professionals can recognize a stroke directly impacts the patient’s outcome. Quicker recognition = better results. Enter Think F.A.S.T VR app.
Qualcomm, in collaboration with ForwardXP, Leap Motion and Dr. Raj Dahiya, has built a tool that will help medical practitioners and first responders more quickly identify and diagnose strokes. Using the American Stroke Association’s FAST test for stroke diagnosis, think F.A.S.T helps develop quick symptom recognition.
How It Works
The application is an immersive simulation where the user is in the position of a doctor. You’re greeted by a friendly orb and a patient inside of a simulated medical examination room. First you will go through a short tutorial on stroke symptoms. Your job as the doctor is to perform an examination on the patient in the center of the room. You have 6 degrees of freedom to roam around as you perform your examination. As you begin your examination you’ll realize that you can ask the patient a number of questions as well as perform tricorder-style anatomy scans. Each scan will give you more details on the patient’s condition that will help you with your diagnosis.
The goal is to quickly and accurately diagnose the patient. In addition to just whether the patient is having a stroke, you want to find out what kind as well. The goals of the simulation match the goals you would have in real life because the time to diagnosis is a factor in the patient’s outcome.
Medical Training With a VR App
Aside from just this application, the applications of virtual reality in medicine are wide ranging. For example, imagine a therapy or psychiatric diagnosis VR app where you were tasked with talking to a virtual patient in hopes of diagnosing one of the many psychiatric conditions the patient might have. Therapists could also use this application to train in their ability to empathize with their patient and develop rapport.
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