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For their second annual Innovation in VR & AR for Healthcare Report, XRDC interviewed several experts, like veteran game developer and former Chief Game Designer at Google Noah Falstein, USC Institute for Creative Technologies R&D director Arno Hartholt and founder of the Dolphin Swim Club Marijke Sjollema, about cutting-edge topics like how VR is being used in healing, drug discovery, and neuroscience.
In anticipation of the Laval Virtual show that will be held from March 20 to 24, we look back on an experience that appealed to the public and the press during the last edition: the project Wild dolphin UnderwaterVR. A therapeutic dive with virtual dolphins!
When Benno and Marijke founded the Dolphin Swim Club, they wanted to create extraordinary VR goggles. Benno: ‘These are normal VR goggles. Try them on.’ The sight is breathtaking: floating in the clearest water there are dolphins all around you. ‘But you are sitting in a chair. If you would be in the water, the experience would be even more intense. That’s what we wanted to create. And that was not possible with normal VR goggles.’ The Dolphin Swim Club successfully applied for funds from SNN for UnderwaterVR goggles. Benno: ‘Thanks to SNN we could fund important research into the commercial viability of our plans, but also if we could use recycled plastics in the production process.’
In an interview with Computable, Johan Elbers of the Dutch healthcare institution ‘sHeerenloo, explains how he is always looking for new technologies to treat patients with a mental disability. As an innovation manager, he admits that some of the best applications have been developed with the patients’ personal wishes in mind. ‘The possibilities are endless, but do they really help these people? That’s why we always interview our patients first, to discover their needs. Swimming with dolphins is a good example. It’s impossible to take all our patients to Curaçao (a Dutch and that’s why, with the Dolphin Swim Club, we’re bringing the dolphins to our patients.’
It began as a simple art project, but then evolved into a successful form of therapy: the Dolphin Swim Club allows people to swim inexpensively with dolphins thanks to virtual reality glasses, which also has a positive impact on their physical condition.