Characteristics of research on the application of three-dimensional immersive virtual worlds in health

Abstract

Three-dimensional immersive virtual worlds (3DVW) offer researchers and health professionals the opportunities to experiment with their rich communication, collaboration, virtual and 3D content creation integrated tools. This study presents the results of a systematic literature review conducted on the adoption of 3DVWs in the health care sector. Our systematic review began with an initial set of 1088 studies from five major and top-ranking scientific databases published from 1990 to 2013 which have used 3DVWs in health. We found a large quantity of application areas for the 3DVWs in health care, and classified them into two main categories: educational and non-educational applications. We also analyzed different 3DVW platforms and virtual environments which have been used in health care, as well as the avatar-mediated roles these applications, and frequency of papers in different countries. Our findings can be very insightful for the health care community and researchers.