Virtual reality, video games, robotics, and more are now being utilized to treat a variety of medical conditions.
It may sound futuristic, but technology and animation are an important part of today’s medical field. And the opportunities in this industry are growing as they become more popular with doctors, patients, and consumers.
“It’s a growing market in places with lots of hospitals and drug companies,” says Jason Donati, academic chair of Media Arts & Animation and Web Design & Interactive Media at The New England Institute of Art. “It’s huge. That’s part of what we call visualization — non-entertainment based art and animation.”
Donati says that medical animation is also used to explain medical concepts, conditions, and ideas to consumers. An animator might be used in drug commercials to illustrate the concept of clogged arteries or some other medical problem.
“It helps to explain to someone who doesn’t know how things work inside the human body,” he adds.
In more direct ways, medical animation and technology are changing treatments for such conditions as phobias, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression.
Meghan Kennedy is a caseworker for low-income people with disabilities and writes and publishes a mental health blog. She says that while it is probably impossible to replace the benefits of one-on-one therapy sessions, virtual reality and other technologies can complement those sessions to help produce positive results in patients afflicted with mental health issues.
“Virtual reality therapy is definitely a technique that is worth exploring,” she says. “This type of therapy seems much less invasive than some therapies that are currently being used. Also, it could serve as yet another form of therapy for individuals that may have struggled with a variety of treatments that have either failed or were inappropriate for their specific needs.”
Virtual reality is not the only type of technology currently being used as treatment for medical conditions. Kennedy says that video games are now used to treat PTSD and robotics for stroke patients who need help with redeveloping coordination and movement. Even the Internet can help patients with mental health conditions.
“The Internet serves as a tool for counseling and delivering various forms of therapy, which can be performed and monitored from anywhere in the world,” Kennedy points out. “In addition, virtually any mental illness can be treated with the help of an online counselor via chat, e-mail, phone, webcam, etc.”
Patients with mental health conditions are not the only ones being helped by virtual reality therapies. The Medical Virtual Reality Center (MVRC) at the University of Pittsburgh was developed with the help of students and faculty from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh to treat people with balance disorders.
According to the MRVC Website, “The goal of the MVRC is to use virtual reality to examine basic underlying factors contributing to postural control in persons with and without balance dysfunction and to explore new ways of treating balance disorders. The centerpiece of the MVRC is a virtual reality display room that is large enough for a person to stand in and interact with different virtual environments.”
These emerging techniques, technologies, and animations are also being used to help with the continuing education of medical professionals already in the field. Donati says that personalization design is used to relay medical information not just to consumers, but also to doctors. Because doctors are the ones writing prescriptions medical animation is often used to explain the drugs, they’re benefits and side effects, and how they work in the body.
“The drug industry is huge and the market is getting so saturated that you have to explain the differences between a lot of these drugs and help the average person understand what the differences are,” Donati says. “But it’s not just to the public, but also to doctors.”
The pay is generally better for those working in the medical animation arena than many other sectors of the industry, Donati says.
“There’s not the allure working on a feature film might have,” Donati says. “Some people are willing to make less to have their name on a feature film than a drug company.”