Leveraging Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) for Healthcare Research and Design

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) are increasingly used in healthcare research and design to simulate healthcare spaces, test environmental variables, and examine user responses under controlled yet realistic conditions. Compared with conventional 3D visualizations, IVEs offer greater interaction and experiential realism, allowing researchers to collect behavioral, experiential, and physiological data in scenarios that may be difficult, costly, or ethically sensitive to study in real settings. This realism makes IVEs effective for exploring the complex relationship between environmental design and patient well-being. By simulating healthcare settings, IVEs enable safe testing of interventions, design refinement, and evaluation of patient-centered solutions in a cost-efficient, scalable manner. However, despite their growing uptake, IVEs remain underutilized overall in healthcare research and design. A scoping review of studies since 2012 using Google Scholar and CINAHL Complete identified key applications, including navigation and spatial cognition, examining built environment impacts on behavior, pre- and post-occupancy evaluations, supporting space planning and perception studies, and testing environmental factors such as color, acoustics, lighting, and window views. Overall, the review positions IVEs as methodological platforms that can support evidence-based healthcare research and design, while also highlighting the need for stronger reporting standards, clearer outcome frameworks, and better translation of simulation findings into design decisions.