Virtual Reality as a Potential Cornerstone for Remote Rehabilitative Therapies

Therapeutic approaches using virtual reality (VR) have been effective in recovering function against various physical and cognitive disorders. Given its programmability and precise activity tracking, VR is a powerful tool for therapists to personalize treatments and monitor their patients more effectively. Due to the growing prevalence of VR systems for personal and work uses, and the high reliability of broadband telecommunication, the opportunity to standardize remote delivery of VR therapies is apparent. VR-based rehabilitation has high potential to be a cornerstone approach for remote therapies given critical features: (1) accessibility for home users, (2) patient–therapist engagement, (3) capacity for personalization, and (4) capabilities for precision monitoring. Unlike prior reviews that summarize established measures of efficacy of VR-based rehabilitation for various clinical populations, this perspective highlights the potency of applying VR rehabilitation methods remotely and ways to expand and optimize that usage such as its integration with wearables for monitoring and AI. Moreover, this paper restricts its focus to VR as opposed to augmented (AR) or mixed-mode (MR) reality platforms that are also increasing their prevalence in clinical settings. This perspective article broadly overviews VR-based therapies for rehabilitating physical and cognitive function for various disorder cases before postulating their potential as an effective platform for delivering remote treatment. This article concludes with essential considerations for advancing VR-based remote therapy in the future.