Sound Walk

An immersive Virtual Reality sound system for pain distraction and anxiety relief in clinical settings.                                                                                                                                  Mark Nazemi & Diane Gromala

Problem. For many patients, clinical environments bring about anxiety, stress, uncertainty and sometimes fear. Studies show that high anxiety levels can cause a breakdown in communication between patients and doctors. Although doctors and other healthcare providers are aware of this problem, implementing a system that is easy, affordable, and non-disruptive can be very challenging. Therefore, our novel approach is one of the first attempts at improving the psychological experience of patients in clinics by immersing them in a virtual environment using an easy, non-invasive method.

Approaches. Soundwalks consist of 3 diverging parameters: time, space, and event. During a soundwalk, the listener becomes an active participant, listening and attentively “moving” through the space. It provides a place to focus on, producing an imaginative space that the listener can associate with.

Results. During focus groups and participatory design sessions, we noticed some patients were sensitive to certain sounds. Health research mentions this hypersensitivity, but almost no studies examined this problem. Since sound and music pervades our projects, we therefore studied this phenomenon, which resulted in an immersive system that includes spatialized sound to reduce the anxiety patients experience waiting for clinical appointments. Clinical studies will be completed mid-June, 2016.
Mark Nazemi, Maryam Mobini, Diane Gromala, Hin Hin Ko, and Julie Carlson (2017). “Sonic therapy for anxiety management in clinical settings.” Presented at Pervasive Health ‘17, Barcelona, Spain, 24 May 2017. Published in Proceedings of the 11th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, pp.455‐459. New York, NY: ACM Press. ISBN: 978‐1‐4503‐6363‐1 DOI: 10.1145/3154862.3154892