Image credit and text: Gijs den Butter and Natalia Alvarez, Guest Authors
VRforHealth is very grateful to Gijs den Butter and Natalia Alvarez for their insightful and educational article on haptic applications—an essential component of Virtual Reality’s role in healthcare. Virtual Reality is transforming patient care in countless ways, and embodiment, enhanced by haptics as highlighted in this article, plays a pivotal role in improving care thanks to improved skills. These advancements elevate not only the clinical experience for professional and patient but also enhance the outcomes patients can achieve directly through the use of Virtual Reality. Denise Silber
Medicine is a tactile profession, and as simulated training methods like Virtual Reality (VR) grow in popularity, the demand for haptic technology in medical education rises. When effectively implemented, haptics can improve users’ sense of embodiment and support skill transfer in immersive environments. However, there are many misconceptions when it comes to integrating haptics into training. While interest in haptics is high among students and educators, awareness of the technology’s current capabilities remains low. This highlights the need to set realistic expectations, especially in versatile training environments.
This article provides an overview of haptics, its capabilities, and insights on how to implement it effectively for medical use cases.
What is Haptics?
Let’s start with a working definition: Haptics is a subset of technologies that enable users to experience tactile sensations and interactions within a digital environment, simulating the sense of touch to enhance immersion and realism.
Haptics encompasses multiple technologies that align with the way humans perceive touch. We experience touch not only through the skin but also through our muscles, which provide additional tactile information.
Muscle feedback (force feedback) involves the perception of size and stiffness with our fingers, and of resistance or weight with our arms. To replicate this, haptic systems use force feedback technology, which applies forces to simulate sensations like pushing against a wall or holding an object.
The skin, on the other hand, detects textures, patterns, and other surface details through vibrotactile feedback, a technology widely used in devices like smartphones or VR controllers. Advanced systems also employ contact feedback to simulate pressure and deformation, creating richer sensations like the edges of shapes. Together, these technologies enable a comprehensive tactile simulation for more immersive interactions.
Haptics in Medical Training: A Changing Landscape
Traditionally, haptics has been applied in specialized medical areas like surgical and dental training, where precision in repetitive, task-specific skills is critical. These high-fidelity systems are tailored for specific procedures, such as laparoscopic surgery, and provide detailed feedback to support skill development. However, fields like nursing or anesthesiology require more versatile training that includes dynamic, scenario-based interactions. Here, haptics has seen limited adoption.
Advancements in XR (Extended Reality) and mobile haptic devices are beginning to address this gap. Haptic gloves, for example, are enabling broader applications by combining tactile feedback with immersive VR environments. This combination allows trainees to practice motor skills in diverse scenarios, such as patient positioning or emergency responses, in a way that was previously only possible with physical simulators.
The growing use of haptics in healthcare holds the potential to significantly improve patient care. By enabling more immersive and effective skill-building—such as in surgical simulations, rehabilitation techniques or pain management—XR and haptic devices can ensure that medical professionals are better prepared to perform procedures with confidence and accuracy. As healthcare providers gain access to these advanced tools, they can deliver higher-quality care, ultimately enhancing patient safety and well-being.
A Continuum of Haptic Tools
The range of haptic devices available today spans from versatile systems for generalised training to highly specialized simulators tailored to specific tasks. These systems differ in complexity, cost, and fidelity:
- Controller-Based Interactions: These are entry-level tools for basic familiarisation and procedural training. They are simple and affordable but limited in interactivity.
- Haptic Gloves for VR Simulations: Offering a balance of cost and versatility, devices likeSenseGlove enable complex motor skill training across diverse scenarios, providing tactile feedback that enhances immersion and skill development.
- Generic Grounded Haptic Devices: These systems provide more realistic feedback and are adaptable to various use cases, such asFundamental Surgery’s HapticVR suite.
- Pseudo-Haptics: Combining XR with physical props or mannequins, these solutions are cost-effective and support versatile, scenario-based training.
- Specialized Haptic Simulators: At the high end, devices likeSurgical Science’s simulators offer detailed feedback for specific disciplines, such as cardiology or neurosurgery.
Each of these tools has its strengths, and their effectiveness depends on matching the right tool to the training objectives.
Realistic Expectations, Effective Implementation
Integrating haptics into medical training requires balancing technological capabilities with educational goals. While high-fidelity simulators excel in specific areas, versatile tools like haptic gloves and pseudo-haptics can make training more accessible and scalable. It is important to focus on learning outcomes rather than aiming for unnecessary levels of realism.
The growing interest in haptics reflects its potential to enhance medical education, but awareness of its current limitations is just as important. By understanding these trade-offs, educators can use haptics to improve skill transfer, enhance embodiment, and prepare medical professionals for a wide range of clinical scenarios.
Conclusion: The Value of Haptics
Haptics is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it is a valuable tool in the expanding field of medical simulation training. From simple procedural practice to specialized, high-stakes scenarios, haptics can play a key role in developing the skills needed for modern healthcare, ultimately improving patient care and treatment. With advancements in XR and haptics, its applications are only set to grow, providing trainees with a safer, more immersive way to learn.
Guest Authors: Gijs den Butter and Natalia Alvarez (SenseGlove)
This article was originally published on vrforhealth