Category: AR

Lately, AR (Augmented Reality) has emerged as a crucial marketing tool enabling businesses to alter the way customers perceive the environment they are in. This technology is quite valuable in the hospitality industry as hotels have been selling a physical environment, essentially, which can be boosted through AR. They are diving into AR to increase their bottom line and customer satisfaction as well. Nowadays, people have become very travel conscious, and they plan and book everything in advance. Immersive technologies like Augmented Reality Services have spurred people to explore hotel rooms and locations in their space. Now let’s dig into what AR is and how it is changing the hospitality industry for the better.

Augmented Reality

AR serves to change the perception of the physical surroundings of a person with the use of computer technology. In real-time, AR enhances real-world environments. This technology can be deployed in various ways, like headsets, tablets, or smartphones. AR essentially introduces digital components into Reality instead of replacing Reality. This occurs by replacing the overlaying information of a physical environment with a live picture. Thereby, AR can be used for adding physical graphics to one environment when seen through a device, changing the look of the environment and making it more interactive.

Why has Augmented Reality Become a Vital Element in the Hospitality Industry?

In recent years, augmented reality services have emerged as a vital concept in hospitality management. This is because it enables hotels and related businesses to boost the physical environment they are selling, which includes hotels and their rooms. AR enhances the experience of discovering the surrounding area.

Another key explanation behind the rise of Augmented Reality in the hospitality industry is the quantity of information guests have a tendency to ask for before and during their stay. AR technology is capable of making lots of information available readily to customers every time all day long, enhancing their overall experience.

Also, the shift toward target demographics has increased the importance of technology in the hospitality sector. Now, millennials are the leading consumer generation, and they are more likely to use digital technology and purchase things like AR and VR devices.

According to statistics,

• The booming $570 billion hospitality industry has been augmenting itself by integrating AR into the hotel industry with $31 Billion AR industry.
• By 2025, the $30 Billion VR industry has been projected to value more than $110 Billion and hospitability is going to be a major shareholder.
• More than 70% of travel agencies and more than 60% of hotels have been adopting AI in their entire magnificence.
• By 2027, the retail automation market value in the hospitality industry is expected to touch $5.73 billion USD.

How to use Augmented Reality in the hospitality industry?

Interactive Hotel Rooms

A way by which hotel owners may use AR to boost their offering is via the use of interactive elements within the hotel rooms. You can see an example of this in UK’s The Hub Hotel. They have started to use AR in conjunction with the wall maps that are placed in the rooms. When you point a smartphone at that map, you can use the map itself and make your stay more enjoyable and comfortable.

Gamification

The foremost mainstream example of AR that hit the gaming world is Pokemon Go, and its success has led to an increase in the usage of this technology. Now, the hospital industry is using AR games to enhance the overall experience of the guests staying in the hotel. Often hotels can make their locations a vital part of a recognized AR game. Also, there is a potential to develop their own apps that can make exploring the local area or hotel more enjoyable.

Beacon Technology

Beacon Technology is connected to the idea of AR and works through Bluetooth. This enables marketers to send information to their customers residing in a particular location. For hotel owners, this technology is potentially invaluable. For instance, Starwood Hotels used Beacon Technology to send one virtual key to their guests, permitting them to unlock the doors of the rooms via their phones. Beacons have been used by others to send maps and other vital information at opportune moments.

Augmented Hotel Environments

Various hotels are viewing the advantages of using AR in making the hotel environment more enjoyable, where guests love to spend more time. Holiday Inn, for example, has created an AR hotel experience enabling guests to use their own smartphones to view realistic visual depictions of some famous celebrities residing in the hotel. Best Western, meanwhile, experimented with Disney Starts and AR, enabling children to view themselves along with the characters from Disney films. Other hotels used AR apps to enable guests to redecorate virtually.

AR-based Staff Training

An interesting application of AR is to create one visual interaction and educate the staff on their surroundings and tasks. Innovative AR training assists employees in capturing the required skills for the work with ease.

Immersive Visual Experience

AR can be used for experimental marketing to offer an augmented experience to customers. This includes showcasing various facilities and amenities, nearly locations to potential clients, and viewing an augmented menu; AR is a visual treat for customers.

Benefits of AR Applications for the hospitality Workers

Employees in a hotel can deliver a satisfactory customer experience only when they work efficiently. Hoteliers should keep the operations of the back office intact to effectively maintain the property and keep the operating cost less.

AR helps facility managers to enhance the productivity of the engineers and decrease costs in order to keep them safe. Incorporation of AR mobile apps into CMMS and EAM solutions can help them to do their job more efficiently.

CMMS provides service and maintenance staff with one automated tool that is capable of preventive maintenance, retrieval of recorded data, managing inventory, work orders, and scheduling inspections.

Using AR headsets, companies are able to showcase information to employees and managers in real-time. Also, newbies can get a detailed knowledge of the assets of the hotels. Also, the addition of AR algorithms into the existing CMMS systems help the managers to efficiently monitor assets that reduce maintenance cost.

Wrapping Up

The hospitality industry is continuously embracing newer technologies and transforming each day. The upcoming step of transformation is through the metaverse. With the use of immersive technologies like augmented reality services, customers are able to enter the virtual environment and also explore the facilities, bookings, and amenities businesses in this sector have to offer.

After a huge and widespread success, Augmented Reality is on the way to tailor social media. Definitely! It was quite important to set a trend of Augmented Reality among the common people who are not always sitting with AR Glasses or some other gadgets.

The trends of Augmented reality is extremely surprising as it is no more focused only on developing games and manufacturing heavy gadgets but the present includes social apps too.

On the first mass execution of AR in the Pokémon Go, the feature with Pokémon characters popping around surroundings went exclusively viral among millions of consumers in 2016.

This was a great kick-start for Augmented Reality app developers, in order to discover more applications like this – allowing users to tap inside a completely new realm.

To make Augmented Reality a part of life, developers worldwide experimented with AR using regular applications and including famous brands like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Coca-cola, Zara, Apple, etc. Undeniably, we can see this happening and the future of social media is becoming AR shaped.

In the race of technologies, Augmented reality app developers have wonderfully explored the digital areas using four key components – cameras, sensors, displays, and communication and processing systems, contributing the users with creative, memorable, and out of the box experience.

Now with this incredible technology, we all are visualizing filters, maps, icons, emoticons, tags, and so on into the screen frames. But do you know AR has got much more than these for marketers and brands? How? Let’s dig that out from the upcoming section of this article.

How is Social Media App Boosting up with Augmented Reality in 2020?

Slowly, we have entered into a time where social media content will get empowered by AR. While the gaming industry has been enjoying various benefits in this regard, business marketing has started to carry over through the advanced technology of Augmented Reality.

Several companies like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram deliver fresh and efficient ways to advertise their products.

Trade names have managed to adopt both AR & VR and boosting their audience engagement enormously at a global level.

Augmented reality is transforming the technique brands interact with customers on social media by linking it in our physical and digital creations. And in this section, we will search out to read in what manner.

#1. Perking up Brand Promotion by Custom-made Cameras with Filters

Instagram, Tik-Tok, and Snapchat have been trending these days with n-number of filters getting update every day. From common people to celebrities are going gaga about these social media platforms, and they are using them in the form of event, product or any category of brand promotions.

The filters are not limited to clicking pictures, but also to create videos. The videos are created in 360 degrees in order to increase popularity, sales, and ROI. Also, when connected to the internet, one can go online via camera to yield a real-time promotion.

#2. Urging towards Impulsive Shopping with Sensors & GPS

The Internet is flourishing with too many brands these days. Consumers find it easy to surf the products, which makes them easy to plan before shopping. This is another social media trend, brands will be able to attract the consumers by VR adverts to ensure and fit the “Seeing is believing” phrase into shopping.

It is true that advertisements are the strongest source of branding, but this will only be possible when buyers will be able to explore the products through images and videos on social media.

Sensors and GPS plays a vital role, as it bridges the real and imaginary world in which buyers have presented the look that they would like to view.

This definitely turns consumers’ interest in the brand once advertisements start to run on social media. With AR, it becomes really possible to grab the consumers’ attention and take social media to the real environment through which one can get additional data like location, texture, color, sound-effects, temperature and other properties of any product.

GPS specifically has been enabled in the maps, that will enable customers to navigate the distance and location of any place and get a 360-degree view of the spot before the visit.

The audience will be able to mark the places which they would like to set out, and one more interesting social media thing is that AI will spot the visiting places of the same interest. Isn’t it really fascinating, how you will be able to witness every location before you visit?

#3. Enhancing Ways of Product Engagement with Attractive displays

Social media has offered the most independent way to reach customers. Whether it’s a smartphone or wearable headset system, displays are the source that connects the real with the digital content.

For the customer engagement on any product, visuals and information are placed on the real world using displays or projection in order to create seamless AR experiences.

#4. Allows to Take Quick Decision via Communication & Processing Systems

Are you a person who doesn’t want to stand in the crowd, and get trial to decide whether the outfit is suiting you or not? If yes, then you need not worry now.

Now that customers can try and view products virtually, AR has optimized the apps via communication and processing systems.

These systems will process and interpret every small data to create the perfect AR experiences. Through real-time support, buyers will be able to receive suggestions in order to buy the product which will match the interest.

This high-volume feature will enable customers to take quick decisions and drive customer engagement for the brands too.

On Summing Up

The demand of smart technology is real and social media is at a fast pace to adopt more integrated, cross-platform presence, and machine-learning enhanced eye-catching marketing software.

Augmented reality app development companies have buckled up in 2020 to come up with novel and innovative solutions for social media applications.

This could be a wake-up call for brands this year to customize their apps with AR technologies to run their marketing campaigns on social media platforms.

Author Bio: Vimal Shah is the Co-Founder of Agile Infoways Pvt Ltd, a web and mobile app development company. He has 15+ years of hands-on experience in design and development and heads the key technical and management operations at Agile Infoways.

Now that there’s rapid growth, more and more questions are being asked about AR and VR. The line differentiating between these two reality-mimicking technological fronts is vague. Some novel users who had never come across any VR or AR app or a device assumed every altered reality as VR.

Since there are a number of applications available on the play and app store now, the crowd is getting accustomed to the key differences between the augmented and the virtual reality. VR and AR share a lot of commonalities, and there is little that could draw a line between the two. Because VR has had more coverage than the latter, our understating of augmented reality is still fuzzy, given the various ways in which it is deployed.

As VR and AR are not the same, they require different business strategies and demand disparate skillset to lead operations.

AR vs. VR

Virtual reality device mimics a different state of an environment by creating an entirely virtual world altogether. It does so by shutting the real world and cutting off real-world contacts. VR is, thus, only an instance of reality and not an actual world.

Augmented reality lets the user experience the real world by digitally augmenting or enhancing unreal objects with it.

An AR is a convergence of the real and digital world, whereas VR is only a simulation of reality in a different realm.

With the above explanation, it will become easier to perceive why the following popular apps are categorized as AR or VR, contrary to the belief that every altered reality is a VR.

AR vs. VR: Key Applications

Pokémon Go

This application was all the hype a few months back. What users liked the most is it allowed them to step outside, to stroll around hunting Pokémon’s, much like the cartoon character Ash Ketchum did. If you dabbled with this gaming application, you would know how it overlays Pokémon on your screen as though they were present before you.

YouTube VR

This one is seriously worth the try. There is a whole arsenal of VR videos on YouTube for you to watch. The video shifts it point of view as you move and incline your head.

With reference to the aforesaid examples, the former does not cut you off from the reality and only relays some digital alteration to the dimension you are living in. The latter, however, only creates a real-like instance, and though the world appears to be actual, it is not so.

AR and VR, is that all?

So much heed is being paid to VR nowadays that AR has comparatively been sidelined and has left us with an ambiguous image of augmented reality.

There’s another term associated in close reference to the altered-reality models. Mixed reality, cousin to AR, superimposes digital world over the real and also concurrently allows the two to interact with each other. The MR, brief for mixed reality, goes a step beyond the augmented and fits the future spectrum.

Being the youngest immersive technology, MR is not very well acquainted with. But, we have had some glimpse of MR from the companies that pioneered into the technology with some early investments, and the idea seems worthwhile for now.

The concept is still nascent and will take some time to blend with the ongoing technology.

AR, VR, and MR- use case scenarios

Users more easily relate to VR because it is the most popular entry in our glossary nowadays.

AR – augmented reality applications are best suited where the user needs to be connected and stay in touch with the real world. Examples of AR solutions for an enterprise includes on-job-training. Augmentation is apt for industrial implementation wherein it helps digitally capture the skillset of retiring workforce, sharing and training the less-experienced workforce.

VR apps are helpful where a complete immersion or simulation is required, and the contact with real-world has little or no effect on the immersed environment. Examples include training soldiers in a new, inaccessible, remote terrain without moving troops to that location.

MR – is a more practical augmentation and a leap ahead of AR; it unlocks the interaction of digitally augmented objects with the real world. The terms AR and MR are often confused and used interchangeably, but there’s some difference between the two – as evident from the excerpt above – that we believe was worth addressing.

How AR, VR, and MR differ from reality?

In the way it is implemented AR and MR are not very different from the reality and only superimpose a slightly modified version of it, so to speak.

A VR immerses the user in a state that is entirely different and coincident with the real world. The advent of Virtual Reality has allowed the two worlds – the real and virtualized- digital world – to coexist. The events from world A does not impact world B and vice versa.

What’s in future with AR, VR, and MR?

Though at its infancy, AR and MR – majorly MR – will become the face of virtualization in future. VR would continue to feast on a share of virtualization, but its deployment would narrow down to scenarios where the creation of a different world-environment will be the problem statement.

Moreover, the way we have envisioned the future with interconnected devices interacting with each other can only be achieved by a conjunction of mixed reality and cloud hosting.

Some popular applications/tools to imitate real world

For a moment, we would keep our Pokémon obsession aside and explore other popular applications you can install to experience virtual/augmented reality.

The concept of virtual reality is more focused on consoles and PCs; as imitating an entirely new world requires enormous processing power. AR and MR are more native to smartphones and are able to efficiently converge realism with virtualization.

1. Ingress

From the same developer as that of Pokémon Go, Ingress imagines a world that has discovered dark energy; leaving you the choice to join hands with the Enlightened – who wish controlling humanity with this energy- or Resistance – that aims at protecting mankind.

2. dARK

A short adventure AR game that takes you to a parallel world to connect dots, uncover all the secrets and find the missing person. dARK is exciting and brings out the Sherlock inside you.

3. Sharks in the Park

Sharks in the Park is a more advanced AR immersion application. It lets you convert your field into a fun, adventure terrain with jaw-dropping sceneries. The sensors placed in your smartphone adds to the charm and sense movements in real-time to create a highly addictive gaming experience.

Upshot

These altered realities will become more mainstream in coming 5 to 10 years. If the world continues to grow its craze for AR/VR based wearables at a pace it is growing now, these gadgets will become central to a comfortable lifestyle. We might be more near to converging various capabilities with AR than we think.

Author bio:

Nishant is a content writer by hobby and fortunately also by his profession. A state level tennis player, Nishant has written short stories, poems, and snippets for a number of blogs (including his own). Cloud Computing, Server Hosting and Cyber Security are Nishant’s forte. When he is not writing he is either sleeping or playing tennis.

In the year 2019, shoppers’ behavior in concern to online purchasing has completely changed. One can say the shopping path has changed. Shoppers are purchasing products via smartphones instead of going to the desktop/laptop. According to the Statista report:

“80% of consumers (shoppers) used a smartphone inside of a physical store to either look up product reviews or compare prices.”

“79% of mobile phone users have made a purchase online using their smartphone in the past 6 months.”

With more shoppers moving on the smartphones, their expectations in concern to product personalization are also changing at a fast pace. Buyers want the shopping experience to be focused around them across all touchpoints whether it’s mobile, web or in-store. They want to try out the products, see them in the live environment or can wear (watch, t-shirts, etc.) or taste.

A lot of brands are finding difficulty in meeting buyer expectations in concern to product personalization. And as a result, losing potential customers or facing a sharp slowdown in their business growth. Now a big question arises i.e. how to deal with this challenging situation? Here’s where Augmented Reality plays an important role in improving the buyer journey when it comes to product visualization.

What is Augmented Reality?

The word augmented is originated from the word augment which means to enhance or append something. Augmented Reality is a type of interactive technology which is based on the reality-based display environment. It superimposes the capabilities of computer-generated images, sound, text, and effects to improve the user’s real-world experience. AR superimposes digital elements to a live view usually by using the camera on a mobile phone.

History of Augmented Reality

If you are a fan of using Snapchat, then you must have seen Snapchat filters. If you’re game addictive, then you must have played Pokemon Go game. Must be wondering now what’s common between both Snapchat filters & Pokemon game. The answer is Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality is not a completely new technology in eCommerce or other fields. It was first originated in 1968 at Harvard University by electrical engineering professor namely Ivan Sutherland. Over the years, AR technology kept on growing but the main revolutionary phase in which AR technology took sharp growth is in between 2011–2013. In the year 2014, Google released a wearable AR device named as Google Glass. Months later, Snapchat introduced Snap Lenses, a unique feature that enables users’ to add motion graphics to photos and videos. Following the same trend major eCommerce giants likewise Shopify gave shoppers a relatively new way to experience the products.

Role of Augmented Reality in Retail World

Shoppers are thinking way beyond the expectations of brands. Let’s take a simple example to understand the concept. If you want to buy a smartwatch online, you would first need to feel

• how it will look on your hand?
• the right color match?
• most importantly understanding how it would fit you before you buy it.

Between both the buyer & retailer there is some gap created between the physical world & the digital world. Because of this gap, a buyer can view the digital world but cannot interact with the physical world. Here’s where Augmented reality offers a unique solution to the above example & boundary limitation problem. AR brings out the best of the two worlds(digital and physical) to avail the users with a never before experience.

Another vital component of AR is the capability of superimposing the digital representation of products onto the physical world. When digital products are coupled with the physical world then our ability to understand will be enhanced.

Let’s have a quick look at a few case studies on how major e-commerce brands implemented augmented reality to answer their challenges and offer their buyers with an innovative shopping experience.

L’Oreal Virtual Stylist — Give Yourself a Virtual Makeover or Makeup Testing

Women’s loves fashion & when it comes to the makeup, they leave behind no stones unturned to give their face a perfect look. This is where L’Oreal brand stood up to meet their buyers’ expectation & came up with a unique idea of Virtual Makeover or you can say Makeup testing. L’Oreal’s Virtual makeup stylist gives its buyers’ a comfortable experience of trying on makeup via smartphone camera.

In the above image, you can see by uploading your face image, you can virtually test which lipstick will look more attractive on you before buying from the store.

Benefit achieved:

• Successfully able to control the cart abandonment rate.
• Successfully able to attract the buyers’ attention too much extent and thereby converting the same buyer to a successful checkout. As a result boost in sales.

IKEA Place — Augmented Reality Furnishing

Everyone in this world wants to give a perfect look to his/her room. But the customer is always confused about which type of furniture (color, size, etc.) will add a dashing look to his/her room or hall. This is where IKEA understood the buyers’ intention & came up with the first-ever AR-powered shopping solution.

With the help of IKEA Place app, one can quickly scan their room or hall & place IKEA products virtually right in it. It will give a clear picture to the buyer & accordingly he/she can buy the product which suited his/her need the most.

Benefit achieved:

• At the moment, the company hasn’t provided any particular estimates on the sales stats. According to source reports, IKEA Place app has shown a big spike in the Google trends & the company has experienced strong news media coverage ever since the launch of their app.

TapPainter — Visualize Interior Spaces in New Colors

Have you ever thought that you can virtually check for which paint color to choose for your home interior walls before applying in the real-time? The answer is yes. Thanks to AR technology which made it possible. TapPainter is one such app available in the iOS store which lets you imagine interior spaces in new colors in concern to natural lighting conditions.

App users can easily select the paint from a broad selection of brands such as Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore, Behr, and more. You can choose contrasting colors for various walls to see the finished look.

Technologies Involved in Augmented Reality

So far we are now clear with the concept of Augmented Reality & the role it is playing in the eCommerce industry. Now, the next question arises technologies that AR uses or AR technology methods. So let’s discuss on the same

1. Marker-Based Augmented Reality:

This technology utilizes your smartphone camera and marker will yield a result when the visual pointers are sensed by a reader. A visual marker can be anything, as long as it has enough sole visual points. In marker-based augmented reality, the images which have to be recognized are provided before-hand. In this technology, you will have an exact idea of what the application will search for while obtaining camera frames. The apps which are coming these days are based on the marked-based technology likewise IKEA Place, TapPainter.

2. Markerless Augmented Reality:

You can say this technology is a vice-versa of Marker-based augmented reality. Visual marker is not required. In this technology, there is no need for prior knowledge in concern to the user’s environment to superimpose 3D content into a particular scene. Implementing this technology is a bit difficult reason because the recognition algorithm operating in your AR application has to identify some key features that may exist in your camera frames. Basically, this technology is used in 3d maps & navigation systems.

3. Projection-Based Augmented Reality:

This technology overlay computer-generated graphics onto the user’s view of the real world. You can view the 3d projections after pointing the camera frame onto the real object.

Benefits of Augmented Reality in the Retail Industry

Improving Buyers’ Experience:

The AR technology grants buyers’ who typically buy online the opportunity to observe the product in the real-time just like the same way as they would if they were viewing the product in the physical store. It gives the buyers’ a more genuine feel of the product as compared to the old technique of viewing product online.

More Customization:

Nowadays, buyers’ tends to search for various options & choices before making a final deal. With the help of augmented reality, buyers’ can now experience the real view of the products from their home/office itself, eliminating the need of visiting a physical store.

Improved Shopping Support to Buyers’:

Without shopping support in eCommerce, it’s very hard to sell a product to the potential customer. Here’s where augmented reality played an important crucial by bridging the gap between the shopping support experience. If you take a case of L’Oreal’s Virtual makeup stylist, you can see how they are giving excellent shopping support to their customer base. They are providing a unique way to test out products virtually before making a purchase.

Cons of Augmented Reality

Privacy Concerns:

Augmented Reality concept is based on the open-source architecture. And the history itself speaks that open-source architecture is more vulnerable to potential threats & cyber attacks. So, thereby breaching privacy concerns up to some context.

Implementation Cost on Higher End:

The cost involved in developing the AR-based application is on higher-end reason because of the higher costs involved in beta testing of the AR-based app. The developer needs to assure that the coding required for one integration doesn’t negatively affect the integration of another part of the hardware.

eCommerce Platforms which supports Augmented Reality

Shopify:

Shopify is the first full-fledged eCommerce platform to provide you the Augmented Reality experience. At the moment, Shopify added this experience to iOS users only. They have launched their app 3D Warehouse, which permits AR experiences by enabling you to upload 3D models & link them to products present on your store. For complete detailed information on how to install 3d Warehouse, you can go through Shopify AR powered by 3D Warehouse.

Woocommerce:

If I talk about the next eCommerce platform which has added Augmented Reality concept into its store is the Woocommerce. Back in 2018, Kijo developers launched the plugin named WooCommerce AR Quick Look plugin. To view the complete effects of the plugin, you just need to be using a Safari browser on an iOS 12 based device & you can bring real images to life!

Magento 2:

Magento is another popular eCommerce store which has integrated Augmented Reality concept. Magento store has one very popular app Magento 2 Mobile App Builder, which will not only convert your Magento 2 store into the mobile app but will also facilitate Augmented Reality. An online retailer in Germany, Ikarus has successfully integrated the concept of Augmented Reality in its Magento store.

Apart from above-supported eCommerce stores, I have also been able to find 3rd party apps which has claimed to support all the eCommerce stores likewise Shopify, Magento 2, BigCommerce & Woocommerce. Those apps can deliver the same 3D experience of your products present on the respective stores and thereby resulting in increased chances of more sale & higher revenue.

Future of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is slowly & steadily picking up the pace with the latest upcoming trends in eCommerce. As per the Statista report, the AR market will increase by approx 34 times in 2025 compared to 5.91 billion market size. AR technology is not limited to eCommerce but is gaining popularity in every field from the real estate industry to healthcare, enhancing outdoor & indoor navigation.

With more companies likewise Shopify, Facebook & Google is investing in Augmented Reality, it is indeed possible that in the coming future AR technology will be multi-billion dollar industry. The designers around the globe have already commenced working on improving their UX designs using AR technology trends. I strongly admit that AR technology will surely give a lot of advantages to UX specialists.

So, its wake up call for all the major retailers across the world to adapt themselves to this emerging technology. This technology can certainly change the buying decision of buyers’. And if you as a business owner successfully able to understand your buyers’ intention, then you would be on the top of the competitive market.

This article is contributed by Kunal Khullar — Co-Founder at The Brihaspati Infotech Pvt. Ltd

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In the past technologies like augmented reality and virtual realitywere usually only associated with the gaming industry, which would enable users to experience multi-projected environments using their devices. However, more recently the introduction of these immersive technologies in healthcare has been revolutionary for the global healthcare industry.

Most of us have used one or another version of a healthcare app, either its fitness apps or virtual visits and stay-home check-ups with the doctor. Even though these technologies have been in the market for a while, people’s attitude about virtual care is still changing. According to research, 23 percent of patients have had a virtual visit with a doctor or nurse, and 57 percent of people who haven’t had a virtual visit are willing to try them.

However, AR and VR in the healthcare industry have gone far beyond the user-facing apps. In this blog, we will talk about how AR and VR technologies are transforming the healthcare industry.

What are AR and VR technologies?

Augmented Reality manipulates the real-world setting by adding digital elements to it, often using the smartphone camera. Few mainstream examples of AR would include Snapchat lenses and the Pokemon Go mobile game, as it makes changes to users actually environment.

On the other hand, Virtual Reality offers a completely immersive experience that has nothing to do with the user’s physical world. A VR headset would actually transport users into a new reality either imagined or from the real world.

However, another emerging technology in healthcare is the mixed reality, MR, which basically joins both and it’s most commonly associated with Microsoft HoloLens goggles.

Medical training

The delicate nature of surgeries requires surgeons to be meticulous and very keen while their patients are on the operating table. For obvious reasons, over the years, surgical procedures have tended to become more time-consuming.

However, a crucial part of their training is to shadow the surgeons at work, but as usually only two or three students are allowed inside an operating theatre at any given point, this leads to a big logistic problem.

Hence, the virtual reality technology makes a big impact in speeding up the training process. It enables the surgeons in training to increase their hours of practice, as now more of them can be part of the actual surgeries.

This was an inspiration for the digital healthcare startup, Medical Realities, their solution to this problem was to introduce VR in surgical training. They installed a number of cameras at different angles of the operating theatre to build a 360-degree view of the area. The medical students will only be required to wear a VR headset to join the high-pressure environment of the surgery and gain vital experience.

VR in pain relief

A while back the use of VR technology in healthcare was only limited to being a clinical tool for pain management. In the year 1996, researchers Hunter Hoffman and David Patterson from the University of Washington came with the idea to use this immersive technology in healthcare by helping to relieve pain through distraction.

This use of VR proves to be very effective in situations where patients have experienced extreme pain such as cancer, open wounds, burns, and broken limbs. At some point, there is a need for a distraction in the brain. An exhilarating diversion by VR can help in confusing the pain pathways that go into the brain and minimize the agonizing experience.

Moreover, the university’s HITLab and Harborview Burn Center in Seattle, has come up with SnowWorld, the first virtual world created with the purpose to help reduce pain. It’s particularly designed for burn patients. They become engrossed in the computer-generated icy adventure where all they need to do is throw endless amounts of snowballs at penguins and often it helps to distraction them from the pain.

Treatment of PTSD

Soldiers who have been through combat are likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, PTSD is not just limited to soldiers, this mental disorder can affect anyone who may have been through some petrifying experience like road accidents, physical or mental abuse or sexual assault.

AR and VR technology in healthcare can help recreate the specific scenes that trigger fear in a patient and before they are assisted in coping with their painful experience, they relive the memories to be able to gain control of their emotions. Many medical professionals use seemingly realistic scenes to treat PTSD and anxiety patients while ensuring them that they are now in a safer environment.

Furthermore, virtual reality can also offer a way for doctors to provide exposure therapy to patients suffering from paranoia by being fully in control of the environment they are exposing the patient to.

HoloLens brings AR in healthcare

Microsoft HoloLens is the first AR headset that helps build holograms of digital content in the real world. Even though the consumer take-up is quite slow, with a price of $3,000, but it has already been adopted in the healthcare industry.

The option of bringing a realistic image of brain or heart in the classroom, have it passed around, and examined in-depth, can make a big difference for medical students. On the other hand, surgeons can also use a hologram to prepare for long and complex operations.

This practice can really help improve the confidence of students in learning anatomy and give them a chance to make mistakes, which is the best way to learn but this is a privilege that is not often offered in medical field.

Therapy for differently-abled

AR and VR in the healthcare industry have made it a possibility for differently-abled people to experience the thrills of the world despite their physical conditions. These advanced technologies strive to improve their quality of life by enabling them to experience different environments that appear and feel real. For example, a person who is bound to a wheelchair can experience the joy of walking on a beach through VR.

Conclusion

As time passes, the need for quality medical professionals is only going to grow, luckily with technologies like AR and VR in the healthcare industry, have proven to be completely transformational. Moreover, as these technologies become more developed and widespread, it’s expected that AR and VR are well underway in disrupting the medical industry.

This article is contributed by Jane Collen, creative content writer and digital marketer at TekRevol

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