One of the earliest applications of VR was the distraction from painful medical procedures. However, VR requires the visual shielding of the patient from the real world, which may be frightening for some patients and perceived as a loss of control. This is especially relevant for children, as the perceived separation from their accompanying caregiver in an emotionally distressing situation plays a significant role. Likewise, caregivers often struggle with witnessing their child in fear and pain. While existing VR solutions for pain and anxiety reduction focus exclusively on the patient, we introduce Sweet Dive VR, a cooperative VR game designed to distract both patients and their caregivers from pain and fear. Through asymmetric gameplay, both parties are actively involved in the game world and must cooperate, while the additional technical effort for setup is kept to a minimum. At present, we are conducting a multicenter clinical study to evaluate our assumptions.
Partners
Pediatric Health Play Team / Zentrum für Kinder- und Jugendmedizin
Lehrstuhl für Medieninformatik | Entertainment Computing, Universität Duisburg-Essen
Center for Virtual and Extended Reality in Medicine
Funding
No Funding.
Contact and Website
Dr. med. Oliver Basu
Dr. rer. nat. Stefan Liszio
Publications
Liszio S, Bäuerlein F, Hildebrand J, Van Nahl C, Masuch M, Basu O. Cooperative Virtual Reality Gaming for Anxiety and Pain Reduction in Pediatric Patients and Their Caregivers During Painful Medical Procedures: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Res Protoc. 2025;14:e63098. doi:10.2196/63098 (Open Access)
