Accepted for/Published in: JMIR XR and Spatial Computing (JMXR)
Date Submitted: Nov 2, 2023
Date Accepted: Apr 25, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Different Perspectives between Medical Students and Developers on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality and Three-Dimensional Printing Technologies: A Survey Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and three-dimensional printing (3DP) hold transformative potential in education and healthcare. However, complete integration has not yet been achieved, and routine utilization is limited. There may exist a gap in understanding perspectives between medical students and developers.
Objective:
We investigated their perspectives regarding satisfaction, utilization trends, advantages, and current challenges of these technologies.
Methods:
Medical students and developers with expertise in these technologies participated in a four-week elective course that combined lectures and hands-on sessions. Students’ pre- and post- surveys were conducted to assess their satisfaction and utilization trends related to these technologies. A separate survey was conducted for developers to explore their satisfaction, utilization trends, advantages and current challenge with these technologies.
Results:
Students’ overall satisfaction with VR, AR, and 3DP was higher than that of developers. In VR, students were more satisfied than developers in the reality category, but there was no significant difference in their understanding of the concept and spatial ability categories in AR. Both groups anticipated the use of AR in surgery within 5 years but, had differing perspectives on student and resident education, personal and collaborative surgical planning, and communication with patient's caregivers. Developers recognized the advantages of VR as immersion, AR as engagement in AR, and MR as the integration of real and virtual spaces. They also highlighted hardware performance as a main challenge for VR, AR, and MR, with high manufacturing costs as a major challenge for 3DP.
Conclusions:
This study elucidates the different perspectives between medical students and developers regarding 3D technologies, highlighting the discrepancy of potential applications and challenges within the medical field. These findings guide the integration of 3D technologies in education and healthcare to fulfill the needs and goals of both medical students and developers.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.