Your Room Has the Key: Holistic Patient Assessment for XR Medical Teleconsultation

What is it about?

If you’re receiving medical treatment, what could matter most for your quality of life and treatment outcomes? Getting the right diagnosis, adequate medication, and accurate lab tests. Yes, you got it. However, there is another factor, which is called the “upstream factor”. It is also known as your “social and environmental factor”. While this factor is crucial, current industrial solutions and research have primarily focused on training or physician collaboration, thereby overlooking the importance of assessing patients’ non-medical factors in the consulting environment. To solve this issue, we proposed a holistic patient assessment system in an extended reality (XR) teleconsultation environment. Using digital twin (DT) of the patient’s environment and a physical examination assistance tool, healthcare professionals could effectively assess non-medical factors and enhanced diagnosis accuracy. Current healthcare professionals from diverse medical settings evaluated the system’s medical validity for its adequate integration of crucial factors in medicine and potential for real-world deployment. We believe that this system could shed a new light of research in future XR telehealth, particularly in the context of patient-centered and inclusive care.

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Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Why is it important?

To the best of our knowledge, our work was the first research to integrate the assessment of upstream factors through DT and include an assistance tool to enhance precise diagnosis in a longitudinal perspective. Although holistic assessment offers numerous benefits, it has not been vigorously conducted due to a lack of healthcare professionals and budgets. Through this system, we hope to contribute to time and costeffective, personalized healthcare.