Immersive Simulation Program

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A wide range of services are provided by the Immersive Simulation Program (ISP) and its staff including, scientific consultation, technological consultation and support, acting as a conduit to developers, data collection, study administration, data preparation and analysis, and arranging necessary scientific materials. The ISP also engages in communication and education about virtual reality and related technologies to the research and health care communities, and to the public. During this reporting year, four Social and Behavioral Research Branch-initiated research projects, and one project initiated within the wider NIH have been served by the IVETA team. The IVETA team has also conducted capacity-building research. These include: - A study assessing the influence of patient race/ethnicity and socio-economic status on physician decision-making related to personalized medicine (PI: Bonham): Scientific and technological consultation, data collection, data coding and management - A project related to encouraging communication about genetic risk among families (PI: Koehly): virtual reality environment planning and consultation, study design consultation - A study of an intervention to communicate about gene-environment interaction concepts (PI; Persky): virtual environment design consultation and research - A study about ADHD intervention (PI: Shaw): consultation - A study about treatments for alcohol use disorder (PI: Leggio): consultation and data wrangling - A project using eye tracking to assess methods of identification for genetic conditions We have also played a more minor role in supporting data analysis in several other projects and analyses. We have also contributed our expertise to extramural clinical trials assessing VR approaches for chronic pain (PI: Spiegel) In addition to directly serving the research needs of the Social and Behavioral Research Branch and other NIH colleagues, the IVETA team also conducts research and assessments to expand its own capabilities. During this reporting year the IVETA team has worked on projects focused on application of machine learning approaches to analyze physical movement behavior in VR. We have engaged in some pilot work aimed at improving the experiences of patients undergoing healthcare and research procedures using virtual and augmented reality, and have analyzed the role of social variables in influencing psychological and physiological responses to VR.