Extended reality for patient recovery and wellness

The healthcare sector is undergoing rapid change using information and communication technologies (E-Health). E-Health enables faster access to patient records and effective diagnosis and opens new areas of technology curated treatments. The unprecedented situation of the COVID pandemic faced by the world population has shifted greater focus toward healthcare and remote care systems, which have given rise to technological innovations in healthcare systems, including advancements in immersive extended reality (XR). Virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality are together referred to as XR or immersive XR. Immersive XR also refers to all real-and-virtual collaborative environments and human–machine interactions. The characteristics of XR, such as integrating real and virtual environments and user interaction facilitation by utilizing past data, have promoted the application of immersive XR in many healthcare domains, including psychotherapy, patient recovery, wellness, etc. Poststroke motor recovery and neurorehabilitation are some examples that utilize XR-enabled platforms. Thus, this chapter will focus on mapping current research and development of immersive XR in patient recovery and wellness in the context of trivial and emerging nontrivial applications. This chapter will also involve systematic exploration of the available academic manuscripts, global patent grants, and emerging technical standards to compare the current academic and commercial developments to extend immersive XR in the field of patient recovery and wellness.