Here’s another addition to the list of potential health applications for Oculus Rift.
Last fall video game artist Pri Firstenberg got ahold of an early version of the virtual reality headset for her grandmother, who was dying from cancer and unable to leave home. She filmed the above video of her grandmother, Roberta, trying some demos created for the Rift.
“This has been so therapeutic that it should be put forth as a therapeutic type of thing that people can go to and become immersed in,” the elder Firstenberg says in the video. “This has been a most valuable experience.”
Roberta has since passed, but Pri recently told her story to The Rift Arcade.
Virtual reality therapy has been studied in several applications related to cancer, from a palliative care tool to a distraction during chemotherapy treatments. And although Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion last month, has not yet brought Rift to market for general consumers, researchers and entrepreneurs are already dreaming up ways to use it in the clinic. One researcher is exploring it as a way to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems.
