Samsung Electronics has announced it will work with Gangnam Severance Hospital to develop virtual reality healthcare-based technology.
Gangnam Hospital, based in South Korea, and VF reality content specialist F&A Ltd are working in partnership with Samsung to build a new medical IT infrastructure with a virtual reality business model that can give diagnoses to patients.
The model will work broadly around the healthcare sector, but Samsung plans to develop specific medical programs for mental health. These programs will cover cognitive behaviour therapy and psychological assessments, diagnosis and treatment’s to prevent suicide.
Doctors will use VR & AI to give patients assessments and treatments.
Samsung plans to develop VR diagnostic kits and chairs to analyse a patient’s current psychological condition and create an application using artificial intelligence for psychological assessments.
VR mental health programs will cover everything from a patient’s diagnosis to their treatment plan and evaluation, using artificial intelligence to create a diagnosis system. The aim is to build a ‘service platform’ for the healthcare sector.
Dr. Jae-Jin Kim, vice-director of Gangnam Severance Hospital, Yonsei University, said: “Gangnam Severance Hospital has been operating a virtual reality clinic since 2005 and is presenting new alternatives to various psychotherapy and education through medical technology using virtual reality.
“We hope that this agreement will enable us to develop more specialized psychotherapy and prevention programs to provide more sophisticated medical services.”
Content from our partners
Samsung’s Gear VR headset will be the primary port of call for the program developments, followed by Samsung’s Gear S3 Smartwatch, S Health App and Bixby which will all bring advanced technologies to the program development giving hospitals a range of devices to use with patients.
Read More: New era for Samsung: Smart home technology & Galaxy Note 8
Samsung’s VR healthcare mental health program aims to be commercialised by 2018 alongside Gangnam’s virtual hospital clinic, and then launched in local governments, dementia centres and schools as well as households.
As well as healthcare, Samsung Electronics uses the Gear VR headset to expand its market with other areas such as games, education and tourism.
