Using virtual worlds as a platform for collaborative meetings in healthcare: a feasibility study
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(2020) 20:442
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Using virtual worlds as a platform for collaborative meetings in healthcare: a feasibility study Michael J. Taylor1,2, Chiya Shikaislami1, Chris McNicholas2, David Taylor1, Julie Reed2 and Ivo Vlaev3*
Abstract Background: Healthcare teams often consist of geographically dispersed members. Virtual worlds can support immersive, high-quality, multimedia interaction between remote individuals; this study investigated use of virtual worlds to support remote healthcare quality improvement team meetings. Methods: Twenty individuals (12 female, aged 25–67 [M = 42.3, SD = 11.8]) from 6 healthcare quality improvement teams conducted collaborative tasks in virtual world or face-to-face settings. Quality of collaborative task performances were measured and questionnaires and interviews were used to record participants’ experiences of conducting the tasks and using the virtual world software. Results: Quality of collaborative task outcomes was high in both face-to-face and virtual world settings. Participant interviews elicited advantages for using virtual worlds in healthcare settings, including the ability of the virtual environment to support tools that cannot be represented in equivalent face-to-face meetings, and the potential for virtual world settings to cause improvements in group-dynamics. Reported disadvantages for future virtual world use in healthcare included the difficulty that people with weaker computer skills may experience with using the software. Participants tended to feel absorbed in the collaborative task they conducted within the virtual world, but did not experience the virtual environment as being ‘real’. Conclusions: Virtual worlds can provide an effective platform for collaborative meetings in healthcare quality improvement, but provision of support to those with weaker computer skills should be ensured, as should the technical reliability of the virtual world being used. Future research could investigate use of virtual worlds in other healthcare settings. Keywords: Virtual worlds, Quality improvement, Multidisciplinary team meeting, MDT
Background Computer-generated, online virtual environments known as ‘Virtual Worlds’ have been utilized in many different organizational contexts [1–3]. Virtual worlds have been used for healthcare-related teaching [4], dissemination [5] and simulation [1, 6] but their use as a platform for healthcare staff team meetings has not previously been * Correspondence: [email protected] 3 Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Scarman Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
studied. Teams working in healthcare, such as multidisciplinary teams and quality improvement teams often include members based across different hospital sites, making face-to-face meetings potentially difficult for members to attend [7, 8]. Videoconference has been used to enable meetings between staff across hospital sites, saving travelling time and costs [7, 9]. Despite the demonstrate
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