Samsung Developing VR Mental Health Diagnosis Tools For Hospitals

Samsung’s mobile virtual reality platform has flourished over the past couple of years. It has really pushed virtual reality to consumers through its Gear VR headsets. Samsung’s work in the VR space isn’t just limited to apps and games. It’s also building innovative solutions that will literally enhance the lives of people in some cases.

Samsung has revealed that it’s developing virtual reality-based mental health diagnosis tools for hospitals. This is part of a collaboration between the South Korean giant, Gangnam Severance Hospital, and VR content maker FNI.

Samsung’s aim is to commercialize this technology and offer it to hospitals, dementia centers, and schools before eventually being made available to the average consumer. The program will use the hospital’s medical data while FNI will develop the VR programs that will run on Samsung’s Gear VR headset.

The focus will be on cognitive behavior therapies for suicide prevention and psychological assessment in these programs. Samsung will aid the development process with its various products like the Gear VR headset, the S Health app, the Gear S3 smartwatch, and its artificial intelligence-powered assistant Bixby.

The new programs that will be developed for the Samsung Gear VR headset won’t be commercially available until next year. Who knows when it will arrive for the average consumer.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Medical
Tags: Gear VR, Virtual Reality (VR), _cold