Using Virtual Reality to Study Health in the Home

Managing one’s own healthcare has been progressively changing from occurring at hospitals and healthcare facilities to one’s own day–to–day living environment. Due to this change, studying how people care for themselves becomes more challenging as visiting people in their living environments is intrusive and often logistically challenging. LiDAR scanning technology allows for highly detailed capture and generation of 3D models. With proper rendering software, virtual reality (VR) technology enables the display of LiDAR models in a manner that provides immersion and presence of feeling like one is situated in a scanned model. This document describes the combination of using LiDAR and VR technology to enable the study of health in the home. A research project involving the study of how home context affects diabetic patients’ ability to manage their health information in the home is presented as an example. The document finishes by discussing other potential health care applications that could use similar methodologies as those introduced to improve health in the home for additional chronically ill populations.