Garrett Bernie, Taverner Tarnia, Gromala Diane, Tao Gordon, Cordingley Elliott, Sun Crystal
School of Nursing, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada.
JMIR Serious Games. 2018 Oct 17;6(4):e10839. doi: 10.2196/10839.
Virtual reality (VR) therapy has been explored as a novel therapeutic approach for numerous health applications, in which three-dimensional virtual environments can be explored in real time. Studies have found positive outcomes for patients using VR for clinical conditions such as anxiety disorders, addictions, phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, stroke rehabilitation, and for pain management.
This work aims to highlight key issues in the implementation of clinical research for VR technologies.
A discussion paper was developed from a narrative review of recent clinical research in the field, and the researchers' own experiences in conducting VR clinical research with chronic pain patients.
Some of the key issues in implementing clinical VR research include theoretical immaturity, a lack of technical standards, the problems of separating effects of media versus medium, practical in vivo issues, and costs.
Over the last decade, some significant successes have been claimed for the use of VR. Nevertheless, the implementation of clinical VR research outside of the laboratory presents substantial clinical challenges. It is argued that careful attention to addressing these issues in research design and pilot studies are needed in order to make clinical VR research more rigorous and improve the clinical significance of findings.
虚拟现实（VR）疗法已被探索为一种用于众多健康应用的新型治疗方法，在这种方法中可以实时探索三维虚拟环境。研究发现，使用VR治疗焦虑症、成瘾、恐惧症、创伤后应激障碍、饮食失调、中风康复等临床疾病以及进行疼痛管理的患者有积极效果。
这项工作旨在突出VR技术临床研究实施中的关键问题。
通过对该领域近期临床研究的叙述性综述以及研究人员自身对慢性疼痛患者进行VR临床研究的经验，撰写了一篇讨论文章。
实施临床VR研究的一些关键问题包括理论不成熟、缺乏技术标准、区分媒体与媒介效果的问题、实际的体内问题以及成本。
在过去十年中，VR的使用取得了一些显著成功。然而，在实验室之外开展临床VR研究面临重大临床挑战。有人认为，在研究设计和试点研究中需要认真关注解决这些问题，以使临床VR研究更加严谨，并提高研究结果的临床意义。
