POS1492-HPR EVALUATION OF A VIRTUAL REALITY-BASED APPLICATION TO EDUCATE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS AND MEDICAL STUDENTS ABOUT INFLAMMATORY ARTHRITIS

Abstract

Background:Inflammatory arthritides (IA), such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis, are disorders that can be difficult to comprehend for health professionals and students in terms of the heterogeneity of clinical symptoms and pathologies. New didactic approaches using innovative technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) applications could be helpful to demonstrate disease manifestations as well as joint pathologies in a more comprehensive way. However, the potential of using a VR education concept in IA has not yet been evaluated.Objectives:We evaluated the feasibility of a VR application to educate healthcare professionals and medical students about IA.Methods:We developed a VR application using IA patients data as well as two- and three-dimensional visualized pathological joints from X-ray and computed tomography generated images (1). This VR application (called Rheumality) allows the user to interact with representative arthritic joint and bone pathologies of IA patients (Figure 1 A, B). In a consensus meeting an online questionnaire was designed to collect basic demographic data (age, sex), profession of the participants, and their feedback on the general impression, knowledge gain and potential areas of application of the VR application. The VR application was subsequently tested and evaluated by healthcare professionals (physicians, researchers, and other healthcare professionals) and medical students at predefined events (two annual rheumatology conferences and academic teaching seminars at two sites in Germany).Results:125 individuals participated in this study (56% female, 43% male, 1% non-binary). 59% of the participants were between 18-30 years of age, 18% between 31-40, 10% between 41-50, 8% between 51-60 and 5% were between 61-70. Of the participants, 50 were physicians, five researchers and four other health care professionals, the remaining were medical students (66). The participants rated the application as excellent (Figure 1 C, D), the mean rating of the VR application was 9.0/10 (SD 1.2) and many participants would recommend the use of the application, with a mean recommendation score of 3.2/4 (SD 1.1). A large majority stated that the presentation of pathological bone formation improves the understanding of the disease (120 out of 125 (96%)).Conclusion:The data show that IA-targeting innovative teaching approaches based on VR technology are feasible. The use of VR applications enables a disease-specific knowledge visualization and may add a new educational pillar to conventional educational approaches.