JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive technology which uses persuasive digital data and real-world surroundings to expand the user's reality, where objects are produced by various computer applications. It proposes a novel advancement to medical care, education and training. Augmented reality assists in surgery preparation and patient care, as well as aiding patients and their families in recognizing complex medical conditions.

Objective:

The aim of this work was to assess how effective AR is in medical department training compared to other educational methods in terms of skills, knowledge, confidence, performance time and satisfaction.

Methods:

We performed a meta-analysis of the efficacy of augmented reality in science and medical training constructed by the Cochrane methodology. An online literature search was performed using the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, PubMed, and Embase to find studies that recorded the effect of AR in the medical training up to April 2021. The selection of studies and extraction of data were independently carried out by two Authors. The quality of the selected studies was achieved by following the criteria of Cochrane for “risk-of-bias evaluation”.

Results:

Thirteen studies, with a total of 654 participants, were included for the meta-analysis. The findings showed that AR in training can improve participants' knowledge ([SMD]=-0.69, 95% CI -0.89 to -0.50, P<.001, I2=68%) and skill ([SMD]=1.62, 95% CI 1.14 to 2.09, P<.001, I2=0%) more effectively than con-trol conditions. Meanwhile AR did not have any effect on the participants’ confidence ([SMD]=0.53, 95% CI 0.15 - 0.91, P=.007, I2=91%), performance time ([SMD]= -0.95, 95% CI -1.28 to -0.63, P<.001, I2=92%) and satisfaction ([SMD]= 0.22, 95% CI -0.08 to 0.51, P=.15, I2=90%). The meta regression plot shows that there is increase in number of articles discussing AR over the years and there is no publi-cation bias in the studies used for the meta-analysis.

Conclusions:

The findings of this work suggest that augmented reality can effectively advance the skills and knowledge in the medical training, but not very effective in areas such as performance time, confidence and satisfaction. Therefore, more of augmented reality should be implored in the field of medical training and education. However, to confirm these findings, more meticulous research with a larger participant are needed.