Industry Groups and Associations
The International Virtual Reality Healthcare Association (IVRHA), is a member-driven organisation of entities throughout the healthcare ecosystem, including technology companies, teaching hospitals and universities, as well as healthcare providers and insurance companies. IVRHA’s mission is to facilitate and support the growth of the virtual reality and healthcare industry as this new computing platform impacts healthcare practitioners and patients alike.
Holomedicine Association is a global network of individual experts from medicine, science, technology, and policy. We work to build new methods for delivering mixed reality technologies in medicine and surgery, ensuring they have maximum clinical impact.
Immerse UK connects you to content, applications, services and solution providers, along with buyers and customers of immersive tech in the UK.
Games for Change is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that empowers game creators and social innovators to drive real-world impact through games and immersive media. We convene industry experts through our annual Games for Change Festival, inspire youth to explore civic issues and STEAM skills through our Student Challenge, and showcase leading impact-focused games and immersive experiences through live Arcades for the public.
OKRE: Opening Knowledge Across Research and Entertainment (OKRE) is a new charity and global hub of expertise bringing together the research sector, entertainment industries and personal lived experience.
Transformative Tech Academy We help entrepreneurs and innovators building Transformative Tech find feedback, funding, and friends. We believe that the Future of Work, Society, and Tech depends on the state of the human mind. Humanity needs tech that can support mental health, emotional wellbeing, and human flourishing so that the future can be truly human and humane. From mental and emotional health, to happiness, emotional intelligence, and enhancing cognition, we support entrepreneurs and innovators who are building the tech we really need.
X Reality Safety Initiative – XRSI is viewed by many stakeholders as a necessary component of proactively anticipating and addressing the cybersecurity challenges faced by globally dispersed researchers when establishing baseline standards and discovery of novel cyber attacks in emerging technologies.
Virtual World Society is an international non-profit founded in 2015 and based in Seattle, with a mission to lift humanity by unlocking intelligence and linking minds to address the pervasive problems of our world.
XR4ALL is an initiative by the European Commission to strengthen the European XR industry.
The XR Diversity Initiative is dedicated to making the XR community more inclusive. The purpose is to offer introductory up-skilling workshops to inspire under-represented groups to pursue a career in XR fields. Our goal is to actively change the XR landscape by making the community more diverse, fresh and innovative.
Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN) is an international organization of developers, educators, and research professionals collaborating to develop the scientific, technical, and applied potential of immersive learning.
VR AR Association - Healthcare Committee This committee is working on setting industry standards for the meaningful use of immersive technologies. We are committed to creating and sustaining the conditions that enable all healthcare practitioners to facilitate the transformative power of VR/AR to improve patient care worldwide. We do this through our commitment to educate and unite healthcare providers around the globe on a single mission to disrupt current standards of care.
The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA) is the only global non-profit, member-based organization dedicated to widespread adoption of interoperable AR-enabled enterprise systems.
Educators in VR is an open, global, cross-platform community of educators, researchers, and trainers exploring and collaborating with and in virtual and augmented reality. Educators in VR is the connective tissue between academia and businesses in the VR education industry. Our members come from around the world including Canada, UK, United States, Australia, Venezuela, Brazil, UAE, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines.
S+T+ARTS is an initiative of the European Commission to foster alliances between science, technology and the arts, that effectively implement a European approach to technological innovation centered on human needs and values.
Reading, Listening & Watching
Bailenson, J. (2018) Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do, W. W. Norton & Company
Brennan Spiegel, B. (2020) How Virtual Therapeutics Will Revolutionize Medicine, Basic Books
Dalton, J. (2021) Reality Check: How Immersive Technologies Can Transform Your Business, Jeremy Dalton
VR for Health To help increase awareness of VR therapy by patients and providers, VRforHealth provides a curated video catalogue and information, and facilitates partnerships and connections.
Frontiers in Virtual Reality Frontiers in Virtual Reality is a high visibility journal publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the entire breadth of Extended Reality. This interdisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers across academia and industry, and the public worldwide.
Digital Doc Games YouTube Channel
Voices of VR Podcast, Kent Bye
How This Gaming Tech Can Heal Your Brain - Bloomberg Quicktake
Annual Conferences and Events
International Conference Series On Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies
International Society for Virtual Rehabilitation
International CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference (CYPSY25)
Digital Interventions in Mental Health
Online Communities
Virtually Healthy Community Facebook Page
VR Therapists International
VR Doctors Facebook Page
Academic Communities
Stanford Psychiatry Immersive Technology Consortium, Stanford University Stanford Psychiatry's Virtual Reality & Immersive Technology (VRIT) Program, directed by Kim Bullock, MD, is the first clinically focused academic endeavor dedicated to studying immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in mental and behavioral health settings in a broad range of disciplines. We are a group of interdisciplinary academics passionate and called upon to evaluate, innovate, and disseminate advances in the field of virtual and augmented reality technology in real world clinical settings.
Immersive Technologies And Digital Mental Health Network, Queens University, Belfast A trans-disciplinary partnership of academics, practitioners and technology companies focusing on therapeutic and pedagogical advances in mental health and social care through digital means.
The Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab, Radboud University We are committed to meeting young people in the digital playgrounds they have chosen to inhabit and providing choices that delight and empower youth while also training emotional resilience skills.
Centre for Immersive Technologies, Leeds University The Centre for Immersive Technologies works across a range of disciplines to drive forwards the use of immersive technologies in research, education and industry.
Our cutting-edge research provides new and innovative ways of using virtual reality and augmented reality, also known as extended reality or XR, to impact upon tomorrow’s society. It also helps industry to see the advantages and potential pitfalls of immersive technologies, enabling our private and public-sector partners to make informed choices.
Immerse UK Healthcare Series
UK Healthcare Organisations
- NHSx NHSx is a joint unit bringing together teams from the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and NHS Improvement to drive the digital transformation of care.
- NICE NICE's role is to improve outcomes for people using the NHS and other public health and social care services.
- National Institute for Health Research NIHR are the nation's largest funder of health and care research and provide the people, facilities, and technology that enable research to thrive.
- Orcha: Independent digital health evaluation and distribution organisation
- Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) The Digital Technology Assessment Criteria for health and social care (DTAC) gives staff, patients and citizens confidence that the digital health tools they use meet our clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability and usability and accessibility standards.
- Academic Health Science Network As the only bodies that connect NHS and academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector and industry, AHSN are catalysts that create the right conditions to facilitate change across whole health and social care economies, with a clear focus on improving outcomes for patients.