Our team has a pretty unique work environment. We’re a design-based innovation team embedded in a hospital. And, thanks to strong leadership and an investment in bringing our frontlines along this journey, our hospital has a culture which is radically accepting of innovation. It’s not uncommon to see prototypes —either created by hospital staff or our innovation team — around the hospital. So it wasn’t terribly surprising when one of my colleagues pushed a cart full of VR equipment on a patient floor and one nurse remarked, “that’s just Mitchell doing innovation stuff.” No big deal.

Our embedded approach gives our team the opportunity to do some deep dives with patients and families. We get to spend time in rooms and waiting areas having meaningful conversations. We take what we hear and look for themes and insights. One of the more profound insights from our curiosity around inpatient experiences was about loss of control. I’ve written about it before. When you become sick or are diagnosed with a serious illness, you lose a lot of things including control over your schedule. If you have to be hospitalized, you lose control of your surroundings and day-to-day activities; what you eat, when you get up, when you sleep...even leaving your room.

The more we looked at that kind of loss of control, the more it reminded us of prison.

So we started to think of ways to provide escapes. How might we help people escape the feeling of being sick? How might we transport people to anywhere other than here?

We played with VR about a year ago, almost by accident. We were interviewing a younger patient on the oncology unit about a different project. She stopped the interview and said: "It's not that I don't want to help make it better here...I just don't want to be here at all." So we asked her where she'd rather be. She described a seaside town in Europe where she'd grown up. We happened to have a Google Cardboard headset nearby and pulled the town up using Google Streetview. When we handed her the headset it was like she was whisked away to her home town. She started pointing at places and buildings. "I know that restaurant! I know that street! I know that place!"

For a few minutes, she was not in the hospital. She wasn't a cancer patient. And she wasn't in pain. She was exploring her beach front hometown.

Fast forward a year later and we're a little more sophisticated. We now have a mobile cart with a VR-capable laptop, a fancy headset and controllers. But the idea is still the same. Let's give people the opportunity to escape being a patient.

Almost daily, Mitchell wheels his VR cart around our oncology infusion center and inpatient wards. I accompanied him one day while visiting an older gentleman. Mitchell asked him if he'd like to try our guided meditation. "Well, actually, I'd like to play golf, can it play golf?" It's a pattern we're seeing more and more often. While some people are interested in relaxation programs, it seems most people just want to have fun.

When we give people the archery game built into Steam's Lab (software that comes with some of the more popular VR headsets), they forget about their pain and location. Without fail, everyone reacts with a child-like wonder to the feeling of pulling back on a bow and launching a fiery arrow at the marauders attacking your castle.

Our study isn't a formal one. We aren't measuring pain levels. We don't have a double blind control. We are just trying to give people an option to explore a virtual world outside of the hospital's walls. And it's not surprising it seems to elicit a delightful response. If you are laying in bed, and the only thing between you and your pain is daytime TV, no wonder it feels insufferable.

There are a lot of neat applications of VR in healthcare. For us, it seems like the most simple games and experiences trigger a disproportionally joyful response. I'm glad we've got a culture where Mitchell can wheel a cart into a room and take someone's mind off of pain and disease with a few holes of golf or some cartoon archery.