Japanese firm Jolly Good, a developer of medical VR, is aiding palliative care communications in the USA through a collaboration with Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

In the USA, about 90% of terminally ill patients wish to spend their final days at home, but many of them spend those days in the hospital, and one of the major reasons is the lack of communication between doctors, patients and their families.

Therefore, Jolly Good decided to develop this product because it believes training medical professionals on communication in palliative care by using VR can help them efficiently and effectively acquire communication skills.

Kei Ouchi, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, spoke at a VR seminar at this month’s Gerontological Society of America GSA 23 event in Florida. He gave a lecture on training assessment skills, a basic skill for palliative care by using the jointly developed VR.

Jolly Good says it will continue to verify the effectiveness of this VR, develop medical VR for Apple Vision Pro in various medical fields, and accelerate business development with an eye on the global market.

Clinicians, patients and their families often communicate and make decisions about the future treatment plan and how to meet the end of life for terminally ill patients within a few minutes in the emergency room, where miscommunication is said to occur frequently.

Furthermore, few opportunities exist for clinicians not trained in palliative care to acquire serious illness communication skills due to issues of limited time and cost.

The VR shows a terminally ill patient being brought to the emergency department (ED) with difficulty breathing and unable to speak. This scene is recreated in which a doctor communicates with the patient’s daughter and they decide together on the most patient-centred treatment for the patient, allowing students to experience the doctor’s perspective.

Research has demonstrated that clinicians who are trained in palliative care communication skills can reduce communication errors with patients and their families and provide more patient-centred, end-of-life care. Unfortunately, opportunities to learn this palliative care communication skill are rare for non-palliative care clinicians due to training personnel, time and cost.

Training in palliative care communication skills using VR would allow wider dissemination. The VR technology allows learners access to repeatedly high-stress, clinical situation from a physician’s perspective regardless of location or time. Creating this dissemination strategy for evidence-based, palliative care communication skills could ultimately improve the quality of end-of-life care.

Jolly Good (jollygood.co.jp) is a medical technology company developing services for medical and welfare applications using high-precision VR and AI that analyses user behaviour in VR spaces, with a focus on the USA and Asia. It is developing services with various research institutions and companies. These services support the evolution of medical care and the fulfilment of human life by using VR, AI and other technologies to accelerate people’s growth and reintegration into society, including medical education, support for people with disabilities and treatment of mental illness.

The company works with more than 200 medical and welfare institutions in Japan, and is involved in joint development projects with Harvard University and Boston University in the USA, and Mahidol University in Thailand.

It recently set up its US subsidiary Jolly Good US in Massachusetts and is developing medical VR and MR including Apple Vision Pro with educational institutions and research centres including medical universities, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies in the USA.