In Limoges, we have developed a virtual visit to the neonatality service, to prepare women with pathological pregnancy. We are considering a similar device for children waiting for operation, and patients to be transferred to palliative care. The objective being, each time, to allow them to project themselves into an environment perceived as frightening, to be able to approach it more serenely.
What about focusing attention?
The XR is very useful for treating phobias, by controlling progressive exposure to anxiety stimuli. It can also intervene in the treatment of addictions: thanks to its powerful effects on neural networks, its impacts can range from simple awareness, to the induction of new behaviors. But we mainly use it for rehabilitation and rehabilitation, projecting patients in stimulating environments to improve their mobility. The XR offers us the possibility of creating complex, although controlled and therefore secure environments, and adding cognitive-motor challenges to simulate real life. Thanks to AI, we can also measure the delta between the expected movement and the movement carried out, without bard the person of sensors.
The XR therefore makes it possible to develop remote rehabilitation.
Quite ! We have developed Terapace (telecception by augmented reality in cerebral paralysis), a device ofexergamingor exercise by the game, having obtained the price of digital innovation during the talents of e-health 2023. Aware that we increase the support of the patient when rehabilitation is carried out at his place of life, we also work on a virtual coach at home to help the elderly to acquire complex movements such as the statement of the soil, and reduce the fear of the fall. This project mobilizes augmented reality, but we are also working on mixed reality with the Perachute project, allowing for its part to diagnose the risks of falls – it is not however here an application of the XR for remote management.
In terms of rehabilitation, can the XR replace humans?
Rather, you have to think in terms of acceptability. This is for example rather low in people who have had a stroke, certainly because they are used to the presence of a therapist in real, and that it reassures them. Conversely, membership is important in the elderly living at home, who see XR as an opportunity to have a coach still available. The personalization allowed by AI is not unrelated to this membership rate, and it will also help to accelerate the uses of the XR. A project like Vipad, which uses the XR to stimulate reminiscence in the elderly by offering them content inspired by their life course, even created social ties, when one might think that the helmet isolates.
Between the VR, the AR or the MR, how to choose the right technology for the right use?
This is precisely the main point of vigilance. For example, virtual reality is not ideal for working on the risk of falling, it is better to use augmented reality or mixed reality. Hence the need to reflect upstream, to frame use and objectives. Today, there is no practical guide to support this reflection when it comes to XR applied to care – unlike educational applications, to which we have devoted a practical guide. We therefore seek to propose a classification, by qualifying the different types of XR and characterizing their possible uses. Moreover, on June 25, 26 and 27, 2025, the University of Limoges will organize in Limoges the first congress dedicated to the development and use of XR in health and sport, which will allow us to advance on these works and to initiate a broader and more reasoned dissemination of these technologies.
> Article published in Hospitalia #69, May 2025 edition, Read here
