• Minh Tam Nguyen
  • Rasmus Bjerborg
  • Lucas Oscar Grosso Pedersen
4. term, Techno-Anthropology, Master (Master Programme)
Abstract This Thesis explores Virtual Reality (VR) in a healthcare setting, Three sites are used in a case study to ascertain the consequence of introducing VR and Head Mounted Displays into the Psychological clinic Cool Kids and in two departments at Rigshospitalet The Pediatric Pain Knowledge Center and the Youth Medical Knowledge Center. Each site has different goals with using VR in their field. Cool Kids want to use VR to treat children who are suffering from phobia of dogs, by gradually exposing them to dogs in a controlled Virtual Environment (VE). The Pediatric Pain Knowledge Center wants to use VR to decrease or eliminate pain during painful procedures involving needles. The Youth Medical Knowledge Center wants to help youths who are isolated because of their decreased immune systems, to have experiences outside of the hospital through VR, despite their isolation. The sites are bound together through their shared Interest in VR and their connection to a VR application developer called Khora, who have developed the applications which the three fields use. To study the phenomena of VR in these varied locations, we used the anthropological methods of Participant Observation, as well as Interviews to gain an understanding of our field and the actors inhabiting it. By using concepts from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and especially: A Key to Success In Innovation by Madeleine Akrich et al. (2002), we seek to describe the socio-technical environment of our three case studies. We also use Mel Slater & Sylvia Wilbur’s (1997) developed framework on immersive VEs, and utility of presence. While relying on the concepts from Slater and Wilbur (Slater & Wilbur,1997:8) we found that the current software application used at Cool Kids is impossible to use for psychotherapy. The argument is that the software application made for treatment of cynophobia, does not have an immersive VE. The subjects experiencing the VR, can therefore not transfer knowledge from the VE to the real world. Additionally with Akrich et al. we develop an analysis of associations in which the actors who have the network of allies, and collectively negotiate VR are the ones who stand with the strongest result. Implementing VR HMD’s in the healthcare sector also means that technical decisions based on home usage become problematic. But VR also have the ability to establish allies in the Pediatric Pain Knowledge Center and as an interessement device manages to seduce doctors, nurses and children using the device because of its ability to disassociate pain within the network.
LanguageEnglish
Publication date1 Jun 2018
Number of pages108
ID: 280259356