The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the launch of a new initiative, The home as a center of medical carewhich focuses on the use of augmented reality and virtual reality to improve health equity by reinventing the home environment as part of a healthcare system.
The FDA hired an architectural firm that designs buildings with health and equity in mind to consider what it will take to transform a home into a healthcare environment.
The Agency, together with patient groups, care providers, and the medical device industry, will build the center considering the structural and critical elements of a home that are required to enable an appropriate home health care environment.
“The center will be designed as an augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR)-enabled home prototype and is expected to be completed later this year,” said Dr. Jeff Shuren, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health ( CDRH) of the FDA, and Dr. Michelle Tarver, deputy chief transformation officer at CDRH, said in a statement.
The lab aims to connect populations most impacted by health inequity and provide medical device developers, suppliers and policymakers with ideas to develop at-home offerings that consider health equity.
The prototype will initially focus on creating structures in rural areas and low-income communities with diabetes as their main disease.
THE BIGGEST TREND
The FDA Home as a healthcare facility is the latest example of how extended reality (i.e., virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality) has entered the healthcare space.
Based in California AppliedVR, a long-time player in the extended medical reality (medical XR) space, earned the first FDA De Novo clearance for an immersive experience in 2021 for its RelieVRx offering, formerly EaseVR.
RelieVRx is an eight-week self-guided at-home virtual reality program where patients can participate in virtual reality sessions that use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat pain. The sessions offer content such as breathing exercises, mindfulness, relaxation-response and executive functions.
Other medical XR companies include a Boston-based VR-enabled mental health company. XRHealth, virtual training company OssoVR, digital mental health company Headspace which launched its new virtual reality app Headspace in allowing users to “feel” the movement they see in XR experiences.
Even tech giant Apple’s augmented reality headset launched earlier this year, the Apple Vision Prohas entered the healthcare space and is being used by companies such as imaging and multimedia company Visage Imaging, California-based Cedars-Sinai health system, and San Diego-based healthcare group Sharp HealthCare. .
Don’t worry, experts argue that while extended reality is a game-changer for healthcare, especially psychiatric care, there are concerns about implementing XR in mental health too quickly.