Project Details
- Student
- Elijah Ko
- Course
- Innovation Design Engineering
- Theme
- Experimental interaction
Virtual reality intervention for chronic pain
Virtual reality intervention for chronic pain
Chronic pain has recently been highlighted as one of the most prominent causes of disability worldwide. Here in the UK, it affects 28 million adults.
Evidence-based behavioral strategies are effective methods, however, multiple barriers prevent patients from broadly accessing these low-risk and nonpharmacologic pain self-management tools. Barriers include few skilled local therapists, co-payments associated with clinic visits, travel costs, and treatment time. Even when delivered to patients at no cost, in-person behavioral treatments can have poor patient engagement, and remain therapist dependent, thereby suggesting a new delivery method to meet the needs of a broad range of patients.
“painVRree” is a skill-based, self-administered, virtual reality intervention for chronic pain. It transcends many current barriers to provides a scalable way to deliver on-demand home-based behavioral treatment for chronic pain.
Diaphragmatic breathing, an evidence-based behavioral pain management technique, is conveyed in an intuitive and playful way.
The player’s breathing rhythm is used as a game controller to navigate a virtual pain portrait.
Heart rate, skin conductance, & peripheral body temperature of painful moments are used for monitoring treatment progress and formulating the pain portrait in VR.