Virtual Reality Medical Education in Second Life
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Increasing numbers of people are using the Internet for the provision of all sorts of health services, from prescribing, through consulting to setting up automated self-treatment programs. But what about using it for education and therapy? After all, in theory, the ultimate form of cognitive behavioral therapy should be “virtual reality therapy.”
By simply wearing your wrap-around sound and vision multimedia headset you can be instantly transported to a cliff edge, soar in a plane thousands of feet above the ground or be surrounded by a gathering of thousands of spiders – depending on your phobia. And the ultimate form of online education should be fully interactive, case based and student driven, all of which I now use in my teaching in Second Life.
The phrase “virtual reality” was coined by Jaron Lanier in 1989 to describe computer simulations of physical environments. Since the mid-1990s, the video game industry and 3D graphics card manufacturers have driven forward the state of personal computer graphics, advancing it far beyond the needs of most business users.



