Asadzadeh Afsoon, Samad-Soltani Taha, Rezaei-Hachesu Peyman
Student Research Committee, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
Department of Health Information Technology, School of Management and Medical Informatics, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
Inform Med Unlocked. 2021;24:100579. doi: 10.1016/j.imu.2021.100579. Epub 2021 Apr 27.
The pandemics of major infectious diseases often cause public health, economic, and social problems. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as two novel technologies, have been used in many fields for emergency management of disasters. The objective of this paper was to review VR and AR applications in the emergency management of infectious outbreaks with an emphasis on the COVID-19 outbreak. A search was conducted in MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase, IEEE, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and related websites for papers published up to May 2, 2020. The VR technology has been used for preventing or responding to infections by simulating human behaviors, infection transmission, and pathogen structure as a means for improving skills management and safety protection. Telehealth, telecommunication, and drug discovery have been among the other applications of VR during this pandemic. Moreover, AR has also been used in various industries, including healthcare, marketing, universities, and schools. Providing high-resolution audio and video communication, facilitating remote collaboration, and allowing the visualization of invisible concepts are some of the advantages of using this technology. However, VR has been used more frequently than AR in the emergency management of previous infectious diseases with a greater focus on education and training. The potential applications of these technologies for COVID-19 can be categorized into four groups, i.e., 1) entertainment, 2) clinical context, 3) business and industry, and 4) education and training. The results of this study indicate that VR and AR have the potential to be used for emergency management of infectious diseases. Further research into employing these technologies will have a substantial impact on mitigating the destructive effects of infectious diseases. Making use of all the potential applications of these technologies should be considered for the emergency management of the current pandemic and mitigating its negative impacts.
重大传染病的流行往往会引发公共卫生、经济和社会问题。虚拟现实（VR）和增强现实（AR）作为两项新兴技术，已在许多领域用于灾害应急管理。本文的目的是回顾VR和AR在传染病爆发应急管理中的应用，重点是新冠疫情。在MEDLINE（PubMed）、Embase、IEEE、Cochrane图书馆、谷歌学术以及相关网站上进行了搜索，以查找截至2020年5月2日发表的论文。VR技术已被用于通过模拟人类行为、感染传播和病原体结构来预防或应对感染，以此作为提高技能管理和安全保护的手段。远程医疗、电信和药物研发也是此次疫情期间VR的其他应用领域。此外，AR也已应用于包括医疗保健、营销、大学和学校在内的各个行业。提供高分辨率音频和视频通信、促进远程协作以及使无形概念可视化是使用这项技术的一些优势。然而，在以往传染病的应急管理中，VR的使用频率高于AR，且更侧重于教育和培训。这些技术在新冠疫情中的潜在应用可分为四类，即1）娱乐，2）临床环境，3）商业和工业，4）教育和培训。本研究结果表明，VR和AR有潜力用于传染病的应急管理。对应用这些技术的进一步研究将对减轻传染病的破坏影响产生重大作用。在当前疫情的应急管理及减轻其负面影响方面，应考虑利用这些技术的所有潜在应用。
