Seeing is Believing: Extended Reality for Enhancing Personalised Patient Experiences

Seeing is Believing: Extended Reality for Enhancing Personalised Patient Experiences The BELIEF-study

Currently, physicians are unable to provide proper expectation management and shared decision-making in facial reconstructive surgery, since no tool is available for offering personalised ‘lifelike’ visualisations of the expected end result. Extended Reality (XR), as an umbrella for technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, creates ‘lifelike’ visual experiences. Within this project, together with SyncVR and MedicalVR, an innovative prototype will be developed that may greatly improve preoperative experiences in facial reconstruction patients.

The face plays a key role in the first way of interacting and permanent changes to the face can have a major impact on quality of life. Skin cancer is the most common malignancy and predominantly affects the face. In facial reconstructions, proper expectation management and shared decision-making are essential. The way patients experience these aspects greatly affects postoperative patient satisfaction with their facial appearance.

A 3D immersive XR environment will be developed to experience and embody the anticipated result of a facial reconstruction. The proposed prototype will be based on insight in patient experiences and unmet needs combined with personalised visualisations based on artificial intelligence. After development of the prototype, evaluation studies in a relevant testing environment will be performed. In view of the high impact of facial reconstructions, our proposed prototype will fill a clinical need for a tool to optimise preoperative patient experiences.

Improved preoperative patient experiences are expected to result in better outcomes in terms of patient satisfaction with their facial appearance, psychosocial well-being and quality of life.In the future this tool could be used to optimize preoperative experiences during consultations for other surgeries, in which postoperative satisfaction with facial appearance or body image is important to patients for their quality of life.

Summary
This project aims to enhance preoperative expectation management and shared decision-making in oncological facial reconstruction patients. An innovative Extended Reality (XR) tool will be developed for creating ‘lifelike’ visual experiences and is expected to improve patient satisfaction with their facial appearance, psychosocial well-being and quality of life.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
4 - 6
Time period
24 months
Partners
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