I am Luuk Baltissen, a PhD candidate at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. In my research, I investigate the (conflicting) preferences of patients and healthcare professionals in the use of Extended Reality (XR) in rehabilitation care. Extended Reality is an umbrella term for several technologies, of which Virtual Reality is the best-known. Using XR can improve health outcomes, while also giving professionals more autonomy. Yet, it is still rarely used in practice. One reason for this is that the preferences of patients do not always align with those of healthcare professionals. As a result, healthcare professionals may want to use a certain tool, while their patients do not (or vice versa). My goal is therefore to better understand the preferences of both groups across six European countries, including Ireland. With these insights, developers can create better tools that both patients and healthcare professionals would want to use.
In a recently published literature study, my colleagues and I provided a first overview of the ‘tensions’ between patients and healthcare professionals. For example, we found that patients value reductions in their own time spent on rehabilitation much more than they value reductions in the time spent by their healthcare professional. In this study, we were unfortunately not yet able to directly ask healthcare professionals what they find important. Therefore, we have developed a survey of 10-15 minutes. In it, we ask whether (1) a professional would use XR, (2) which benefits of XR they find most important, and (3) whether they expect XR to actually provide these benefits.
With the insights from IASLT members, we can make sure that the perspective of Irish speech and language therapists is well represented.
I have included a link to the survey.
If you have any questions, feel free to let me know. [email protected]
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