Virtual Reality Technologies in Health Care—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Virtual reality (VR) offers extraordinary possibilities for healthcare. Continued improvements in hardware and software, together with the decreasing cost of interaction devices, are driving the adoption of these technologies in multiple healthcare fields, from clinical training to patient care and rehabilitation.

In the healthcare domain, VR has proven effective in pain management, helping patients to focus on stimuli beyond pain, or in motor function recovery. It is increasingly being used to support cognitive rehabilitation, anxiety reduction, and exposure therapies. VR-based simulations are also being applied for professional training, allowing healthcare providers to enhance their technical and communication skills through immersive, risk-free environments. Other applications include the use of virtual assistants during hospital admission, or even virtual AI and NLP doctors who can give basic advice to patients, or at least can record the necessary information, which will then be analyzed by a professional.

We invite contributions presenting experiences, case studies, and novel proposals on VR applications for healthcare, including experimental results, reviews, performance evaluations or cost-effectiveness studies.

This Special Issue aims to compile the most recent research and practical experiences, providing a 360-degree view of VR technologies in healthcare, and offering insights from scientists, clinicians, and patients alike. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Experimental results of VR applications in healthcare and rehabilitation, including performance evaluation of VR systems for improving clinical outcomes.
• VR-based professional training for health professionals.
• Immersive VR platforms for remote diagnosis and telemedicine.
• Patient education via VR, including VR interventions for behavioral change, adherence to treatment, and lifestyle modification.
• VR applications in mental health treatment.
• VR-assisted physical and cognitive rehabilitation for neurological or musculoskeletal conditions.
• Surgical planning and preoperative simulation using VR environments.
• VR for pain management, palliative care, and distraction therapy.
• VR frameworks for multidisciplinary collaboration and patient-centered care.
• Ethical, privacy, and data protection challenges in clinical VR use.
• Economic evaluations and cost-effectiveness studies of VR-based interventions.
• Evaluation of long-term outcomes and real-world deployment of VR in healthcare.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. César Fernández
Dr. Susana Lorenzo
Dr. María Asunción Vicente
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.