A Personal Perspective
In 2015, at the Serious Games for Health conference in Utrecht, I experienced therapeutic virtual reality for the first time, thanks to two exhibit stands. One company’s VR program introduced me to a 360° glass elevator simulation designed to treat fear of heights. The movements of my head controlled the speed and direction of the elevator, amplifying the sense of immersion. The other was a fun but precise vision therapy game in which I aimed at stars using only my eyes—a treatment for amblyopia, or “lazy eye.” I was hooked!
During the Covid pandemic, we launched VRforHealth.com, the online reference site, for the therapeutic uses of virtual reality, thinking that the field was poised to take off, accelerated by the pandemic.
It’s been 10 years since that Utrecht conference, and VR headsets are now less expensive than smartphones. It’s time to see where VR stands and to think about the next chapters.
Strong Results Across Clinical Domains
The therapeutic potential of virtual reality has been demonstrated across a growing number of clinical use cases—from pain and anxiety management to physical rehabilitation and mental health. 1412 publications were indexed by PubMed in 2024, and there have been over 7000 publications since 2015.
VR offers immersive environments for gradual exposure therapy, precisely tailored to each patient. As a result, many practitioners report quicker progress with VR than in traditional face-to-face consultations.
In addition to phobias, anxiety, and cognitive behavioral therapy, VR is used to alleviate PTSD symptoms and shows promise for depression and schizophrenia.
VR also has a bright future as a tool to reduce the anxiety and pain of medical procedures in children and adults – needle phobia, placing a shunt, accompanying patients undergoing chemotherapy.
In pain management—both acute (such as during wound care, childbirth, or chemotherapy) and chronic (including persistent pain related to cancer survivorship or neurological conditions)—VR has been shown to be effective.
In physical therapy, VR supports stroke rehabilitation, neurological retraining, and orthopedic recovery by improving engagement, movement quality, and adherence.
And yet, the widespread adoption of therapeutic VR in healthcare is still not a reality. Six factors contribute to this situation.
1 Lack of Awareness
Awareness remains one of the most basic obstacles. Most healthcare professionals do not know that VR can be used clinically. And for some, the idea that a technology could have therapeutic power raises skepticism. Even among those who are aware, few have received training. VR remains largely absent from medical education and continuing professional development. Healthcare administrators, unfamiliar with the evidence base, hesitate to authorize or invest in VR-based interventions.
2 Evolving Terminology and Technology
The vocabulary around therapeutic VR remains unsettled, partly because the technology itself is evolving. Healthcare professionals may encounter a variety of terms—virtual reality, immersive technology, extended reality, medical XR, spatial computing—used differently depending on the speaker or context. This lack of consistency can create confusion.
3 The Obstacle of Conventional Wisdom
VR is still widely associated with gaming and, more recently, with education. Neither context reinforces its credibility as a therapeutic tool. The metaverse has had a rocky road itself while clinicians are looking for practical, evidence-based solutions for their patients today.
4 Missing Models and Market Infrastructure
Infrastructure and economics pose additional hurdles. There is no standardized business model for VR in healthcare. Institutions, clinicians, or even patients mat purchase headsets, with no clear reimbursement pathway. Frequent hardware updates raise concerns about obsolescence. On the software side, therapeutic applications are scattered and not surprisingly, lack the structured information found for medicines.
5 The Pilot-to-Practice Gap
Even when VR tools show promise, they rarely progress beyond early pilots. Clinical adoption tends to stall due to the absence of established pathways for integration into everyday care. This pilot-to-practice gap is one of the biggest barriers to real-world impact.
6 Startups Drive Innovation, But Can’t Do It Alone
And yet, the field continues to advance—driven largely by start-ups. These companies bring agility and creativity, but they often lack the resources to communicate at scale, educate the clinical community, or convince institutions of their long-term viability. Unlike pharmaceuticals or medical devices, therapeutic VR also lacks coordinated advocacy from medical associations and societies.
The Way Forward: Structure, Collaboration, and Advocacy
Despite these challenges, the opportunity is compelling. The barriers are not insurmountable. What’s needed now is a strategic, collaborative effort to shift VR from its niches into the mainstream of care.
With coordinated effort, the field can mature. Industry, regulators, educators, and clinicians must collaborate to establish shared terminology, integrate VR into medical and continuing medical education, and promote clear, clinically validated use cases. New economic models and distribution systems—subscriptions, leasing, or shared ownership—can ease the financial burden of adoption. And the development of “VR formularies” or application registries could help clinicians navigate the landscape more confidently.
Above all, we need champions—respected voices in medicine—to speak not of VR as a curiosity, but as a credible and vital tool for improving care.
Answering the Question: What Is the Future of Therapeutic VR—and Why Does It Matter?
So, what is the future of therapeutic VR?
It’s a future in which immersive, evidence-based experiences are integrated into everyday care—prescribed by clinicians, trusted by institutions, reimbursed by payers, and embraced by patients. It’s a future that will depend not just on technology, but on structure, collaboration, and clinical leadership.
And why does it matter?
Because the conditions VR addresses—chronic pain, anxiety, trauma, physical disability—are among the most human and widespread challenges in medicine. VR offers a path to treat not only symptoms, but the way patients experience care itself. That alone makes its future worth building—together.
From Insight to Action: A Call for a Therapeutic VR Action Conference
If we agree that the results are very encouraging and the barriers structural—then the next step is not another round of presentations of clinical evidence, but a shift in method.
It’s time for an Action Conference on therapeutic VR:
A virtual gathering not to share more clinical studies, but to bring together industry, clinicians, payers, educators, and regulators to design concrete solutions for the pilot-to-practice gap. We must align on validation pathways and define economic models that work in order to move from fragmentation to scalable care.
Therapeutic VR doesn’t need more proof of concept so much as it needs proof of commitment.
About the Author
Denise Silber, an international digital health pioneer, is the founder of Basil Strategies, a Paris-based boutique communications agency dedicated to advancing digital health by improving how innovations are communicated. Basil Strategies is also known for VRforHealth.com, its leading content and partnership platform dedicated to therapeutic virtual reality.
Denise hosts high-impact webinars and in-person events, and produces clinician interviews, white papers, and LinkedIn strategies for healthcare companies. A member of the Virtual Advisory Board, she advises businesses as a Non-Executive Director.
A multicultural American in Paris, Denise received France’s highest civil award, the Legion of Honor, in 2011. She was named one of France’s InspiringFifty women in tech in 2018, and has served as a Digital EU Ambassador for the European Commission since 2022.
A graduate of Harvard Business School, Denise is a host of the Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs podcast, a member of the Harvard Club of France Honorary Board, and Vice-President of the French medical information professionals federation, La FNIM.
This article was originally published on vrforhealth