VR is increasingly used to raise awareness and to bridge the gap between healthcare providers and patients. While traditional medical training focuses on the science of a disease, VR allows users to experience the symptoms and the daily struggle of living with them.
VR disease simulation is typically implemented during medical education and professional development.
Medical School/Nursing School: It is often a mandatory module to help students understand the perspective of the “stigmatized other” before they begin clinical rotations.
Hospital Staff Training: Current healthcare professionals use it to renew their sensitivity toward specific patient groups, such as the elderly or those with mental health disorders.
There is a massive and growing body of research. A 2023 scoping review found that while empathy training used to be limited to actors (Standardized Patients), VR has now become a standard research tool.
The combination of virtual reality and serious games has shown high potential to increase understanding for patients and how symptoms might impact their well-being.
Migraine simulation in VR
During my research about migraine and different aura types I stumbled across a study where VR is used to simulata an aura.
In a study a virtual environment (VE) was used to visualize a migraine using a VR head-mounted display (HMD). The keyfindings after testing it with 32 subjects were:
- Methods: Researchers split participants into two groups. One group simply tried to picture themselves having a migraine, while the other group used a visualization tool to “see” the symptoms.
- Empathy: People who actually saw the visual simulation felt a much stronger sense of empathy toward real migraine sufferers than those who just imagined the pain.
- Immersion: Those who watched the visualization also felt more “present”—meaning they felt more like they were actually experiencing the event—compared to the imagination group.
So in conclusion you could say that VR seems to offer a great possibility to spread awareness, reduce stigma, educate and increase empathy for the ones that are affected.
Sources:
- S. Misztal, G. Carbonell, L. Zander and J. Schild, “Simulating Illness: Experiencing Visual Migraine Impairments in Virtual Reality,” 2020 IEEE 8th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2020, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/SeGAH49190.2020.9201756. keywords: {Visualization;Games;Diseases;Visual effects;Resists;Training;virtual reality;empirical studies in HCI;migraine simulation;empathy;presence;perception of illness}
- Yamada, R., et al. (2025). “A scoping review on the use of virtual patients for enhancing empathy in medical students.” University of Toyama. (Analyzes how “virtual patients” are replacing traditional methods).
