It’s snazzy, but is it useful? Practitioner’s views on meaningful use cases for healthcare XR.

The global virtual reality market size, valued at 21.83 billion USD in 2021, is expected to expand with an annual growth rate of 15.0% from 2022 to 2030. Virtual Reality, although massively known for immersive gaming and entertainment, has revolutionized education and training during the last years in many fields. In medicine, VR has been used from the simulated reconstruction of organs to preoperative planning and from teaching anatomy to rehabilitation. XR healthcare resources are enthusiastically accepted from healthcare learners and teachers alike. However, they still are not mainstream into formal academic curricula. The core precept for curricular integration is educational justification. In short, the question is whether the cost of an impressive VR resource will be returned as educational efficacy. Pivotal for positive reply in this question is the correct design of the educational resource for each use case. Is XR appropriate for clinical, manual skills, or decision-making training? Would you choose an exploratory «Human Atlas» for anatomy teaching or an interactive case study? How much «game» do you need in your educational experience? These are all questions that so far have been answered ad-hoc based on intuitive needs of the practitioners. This panel will present the results of the first healthcare practitioners’ worskhop that was co-organized by iLRN and several healthcare institutions to tackle these questions. Based on practitioner’s feedback, a select group of panelists will open the discussion to the audience of the conference for identifying features and practices for optimal XR design for healthcare use cases.

About Panagiotis Antoniou: 
Panagiotis Panagiotis E. Antoniou is a senior research associate and Laboratory Reader in the Lab of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation, and a Laboratory Reader in the School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He received a degree in Physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1997, a M.Sc. degree in Medical Physics in 2001 from the Democritus University of Thrace and a Ph.D. degree in Medical Physics in 2004 from Democritus University of Thrace. His research interests included Medical Signal processing, Medical Informatics, Educational Technologies and design based research. Currently he is active in the fields of Technology Enhanced Learning (Augmented and Virtual Reality -AR/VR in education and virtual patients), co-creative/ co-design paradigms in experiential educational techniques. He has participated and managed several EU and nationally funded research projects. He has authored more than 80 publications in peer reviewed journals and conferences (h-index:11, i10-index:17, 617 citations), and 5 book chapters in collaborative scientific publications. He is a reviewer in several international journals and member of the organizing committee in several international conferences.