Applications of virtual and augmented reality in infectious disease epidemics with a focus on the COVID-19 outbreak

The pandemics of major infectious diseases often cause public health, economic, and social problems. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as two novel technologies, have been used in many fields for emergency management of disasters. The objective of this paper was to review VR and AR applications in the emergency management of infectious outbreaks with an emphasis on the COVID-19 outbreak. A search was conducted in MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase, IEEE, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and related websites for papers published up to May 2, 2020. The VR technology has been used for preventing or responding to infections by simulating human behaviors, infection transmission, and pathogen structure as a means for improving skills management and safety protection. Telehealth, telecommunication, and drug discovery have been among the other applications of VR during this pandemic. Moreover, AR has also been used in various industries, including healthcare, marketing, universities, and schools. Providing high-resolution audio and video communication, facilitating remote collaboration, and allowing the visualization of invisible concepts are some of the advantages of using this technology. However, VR has been used more frequently than AR in the emergency management of previous infectious diseases with a greater focus on education and training. The potential applications of these technologies for COVID-19 can be categorized into four groups, i.e., 1) entertainment, 2) clinical context, 3) business and industry, and 4) education and training. The results of this study indicate that VR and AR have the potential to be used for emergency management of infectious diseases. Further research into employing these technologies will have a substantial impact on mitigating the destructive effects of infectious diseases. Making use of all the potential applications of these technologies should be considered for the emergency management of the current pandemic and mitigating its negative impacts.