VA hosts 2024 Immersive Summit

Veterans, VA leadership, industry and academia came together in June for the 2024 VA Immersive Summit. The annual event is held to promote collaboration on behalf of immersive technology adoption and expansion across VA.

The VA Immersive Summit is organized by VA's Strategic Initiatives Lab and showcases the real-world benefits of immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) on Veteran care and employee well-being.

"We're committed to focus not only on expanding the application of immersive technologies but also ensuring its evidence-based implementation across VA, and paving a new path for health care delivery," said Dr. Carolyn Clancy, assistant under secretary for Health for the Office of Discovery, Education and Affiliate Networks (DEAN).

A special panel was featured with the Vietnam Veteran Aviators.

VA has deployed over 3,500 virtual reality (VR) headsets across more than 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. With over 10,000 Veteran experiences, providers are focused on methods of increased access.

Attendees had the opportunity to celebrate successes, reflect on lessons learned over the past year and get their heads in headsets during demonstrations that allowed them to experience the potential first-hand.

"We came out of the Immersive Summit last year making a few promises, looking at increasing more headsets, standardizing training and ensuring that we had better access to our data," said Dr. Susan Kirsh, deputy assistant under secretary for Health for DEAN. "We've almost tripled the number of headsets in distribution and we're not going to stop."

In October 2023, under the guidance of the Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning and DEAN, the Strategic Initiatives Lab ("Strat Lab") was developed to take on forms of disruptive innovation that have a higher likelihood of failure or deemed too risky.

Strat Lab's acceleration model was built upon lessons learned from the evolution of immersive technology and their impact on Veteran care. The team identifies emerging technologies that pose the opportunity to replicate the growth and impact of immersive tech and creates opportunities for testing, evaluation and if effective, implementation.

To learn more about the successes of immersive technology in VA health care, visit the VA Immersive website or the YouTube playlist.

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