Sir, we are living in an era where virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are increasingly being incorporated in our daily lives, in education and medical treatments.1 It seems very appropriate to take advantage of this great opportunity in healthcare research by employing a blended virtual reality approach.

As an example, Oculus Rift, a VR goggle recently launched by a UK-based company, has several potential uses in education and training, by artificially recreating our real life by giving a 4-dimensional experience to the user. AR takes this experience even further by overlaying a virtual environment onto an existing reality. Pokeman Go, a location-based AR game, overtook long established social networking apps such as Twitter and Facebook after only a few weeks.2

These fascinating technologies are increasingly being used in gaming and more recently in education, including medical education.3 VR and AR can also be used in healthcare research, for training participants and researchers, or even conducting studies. For example, a researcher can sit in their office and interview a participant at their home, using augmented reality (eg hologram) with a 4D experience. Another example is when assessing healthcare services, different scenarios could be created virtually and participants can be immersed in this virtual environment using VR goggles. The potential advantages include reducing the costs of running a study; ensuring the consistency of interventions for different participants; and minimising the risks that may be associated with different interventions in real world. Potential disadvantages may include: the cost of setting up the virtual environment and resources; the need for training of participants and researchers; and generalisability of the results to the real world.

It seems that a blended approach that combines reality and virtual environments can be employed in different aspects of healthcare research. Besides its challenges, it could also enable us to implement studies which may have not been ethically possible in the real world.