Video Game Technology is Making the Medical Field Better

Video game technology is becoming a popular tool for medical training, and in some cases, helping medical personnel do their jobs better, the Washington Post reports.

For example, training program Osso VR helps surgeons get access to information in real time via a virtual reality headset, alongside tools that enable them to assess how to perform surgery. “Osso VR is 230 percent more efficient than traditional methods,” the Washington Post says. Developed just a few years ago, it’s now used to train over a thousand surgeons a month worldwide.

The virtual reality program also helps surgeons sharpen their skills on virtual patients with tools similar to those they’d use in real world surgery, which takes the pressure off of the possibility of making mistakes. It also measures surgeons’ surgical performance.

Another example of video game tech boosting the medical field includes “Night Shift,” a mobile game that was created for emergency room doctors. The game entails a training simulator that acts as a story-driven adventure, where users play from the perspective of a trauma doctor. As players navigate through “Night Shift,” they spend shifts diagnosing and treating patients, and evaluate if those patients need to be moved to a trauma center. It also takes players through the emotional narrative actual patients experience; for instance, if a player misdiagnoses a virtual patient, and the patient dies, the player is confronted by that patient’s upset relatives.

The game has also made doctor’s training more engaging, and even helped doctors outperform doctors who did not play it.

Justin Barad, a surgeon and the founder of the before-mentioned Osso VR, attributes video games to the growing improvements in training found in the medical world, and in treatments as a whole.

“I’m really grateful to the video game industry, video games and the art form in general,” Barad told the Washington Post. “This wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for video games and everybody involved in the community that basically got VR up off the ground and into really a mature product.”