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Abstract
Research has documented the efficacy of clinical applications that leverage Virtual Reality (VR) for assessment and treatment purposes across a wide range of domains, including pain, phobias, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As the field of Clinical VR matures, it is important to review its origins and examine how these initial explorations have progressed, what gaps remain, and what opportunities the community can pursue. We do this by reflecting on our personal scientific journey against the backdrop of the field in general. In particular, this paper discusses how a clinical research program that was initially designed to deliver trauma-focused VR exposure therapy (VRET) for combat-related PTSD has been evolved to expand its impact and address a wider range of trauma sources. Such trauma sources include sexual trauma and the needs of first responders and healthcare professionals serving on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. We provide an overview of the field and its general trends, discuss the genesis of our research agenda and its current status, and summarize upcoming opportunities, together with common challenges and lessons learned.
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Notes on contributors
Albert “Skip” Rizzo
Albert “Skip” Rizzo is the Director of MedVR at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Over the last 25 years, Skip has conducted research on the design, development and evaluation of VR systems across the domains of psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in healthy and clinical populations. In spite of the diversity of these clinical R&D areas, the common thread that drives all of his work with digital technologies involves the study of how Virtual Reality simulations can be usefully applied to human healthcare beyond what’s possible with traditional 20th Century methods.
Arno Hartholt
Arno Hartholt is the Director of R&D Integration at USC ICT where he leads the central tech integration group. He is responsible for much of the technology, art, and processes related to integrated systems, with a particular focus on the interchange of research and industry capabilities. He has a leading role on a wide variety of research prototypes and applications, ranging from medical education to military training and treatment. Hartholt studied computer science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands where he got his Master’s degree. He worked at several IT companies, from large multinationals to early start-ups, before accepting a position at ICT in 2005. He has over a decade's worth of experience in leading multidisciplinary research and commercial projects, with an emphasis on virtual humans, virtual reality, augmented reality and serious games.
Sharon Mozgai
Sharon Mozgai is the Associate Director of the Medical Virtual Reality (VR) lab at USC ICT where she heads up the research and development efforts for clinical applications of VR, including VR Exposure Therapy, in addition to Virtual Human training and education. Her background is in psychology with a Master’s degree from Harvard University. She has worked at a range of organizations, focusing on computational linguistics at MIT, organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, and VR, Virtual Humans, and AI at USC ICT and at several tech startups.