Immersive Education for Chronic Condition Self-Management

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Harvie, Daniel S
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2021
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Abstract

Chronic conditions represent a significant twenty first century challenge. Education and self-management training are the mainstay of clinical intervention for such conditions since care is dependent on health literacy and self-management. This intervention not only imparts the necessary understanding and skills for self-management, but also helps people to overcome personal barriers to positive behavioral change, such as low self-efficacy. Moreover, education maximizes dignity, by enabling shared decision-making. A plethora of research supports the role of education and self-management training in the management of chronic conditions, whilst at the same time highlighting that not all approaches lead to meaningful behavioral change. Immersive virtual reality (VR) offers a unique set of features and tools for delivering these interventions. For example, the immersive nature focuses attention and promotes engagement; the ability to simulate authentic and interactive real-world scenarios can be used to promote the benefits of active learning; and the ability to facilitate embodiment of avatars with distinct appearance and capability can be used to bias new perceptions and behaviors in-line with the avatar's characteristics. Moreover, the ability to use VR independent of a clinician renders a potential solution to instances where significant barriers to healthcare access exist. This short perspective paper will discuss how VR may be used to host education and self-management interventions in the domain of chronic condition management. Further, it will outline considerations for developers and conclude with a call for the co-creation of new VR-based education and self-management interventions.

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Frontiers in Virtual Reality

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2

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NHMRC

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APP1142929

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© 2021 Harvie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Health economics

Health policy

Graphics, augmented reality and games

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Harvie, DS, Immersive Education for Chronic Condition Self-Management, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2, pp. 657761

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