VR for Good: The Medicaid Equity Simulation Project with Carrie Love
One of many projects undertaken by the GRID Lab is the Medicaid Equity Simulation Project (MESP), a multi-million dollar, multi-year, grant funded project that focuses on creating and testing the use of virtual reality videos and simulations to address biases that may occur towards certain population groups when seeking medical care. Two series of videos were created at Ohio University: one followed Lula Mae, a 72-year old woman who struggles to manage her diabetes, and the other followed Destiny, a 23-year old woman going through opioid addiction who accidentally got pregnant.
"Both narrative series were developed and produced by Ohio university's GRID lab in the J. Warren McClure School of Emerging Communications where exciting new cine-VR techniques were developed" says Carrie Love, producer of the MESP project, "From the GRID Lab team, John Bowditch and Eric Williams served as co-investigators, Matt Love served as cinematographer and technology manage, and many GRID Lab student workers served on the crew and helped with editing."
Other schools and colleges worked with the GRID lab on the MESP Project as well, the content of the project requiring a variety of perspectives and professions. From medical sciences to theater, both professors and students worked together to bring this project to life. "The content in the videos and teaching points in the lessons were informed by research from Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Health Sciences and Professions, The outstanding website version of the cine-VR experience was designed by Visual Communication professors Becky Sells and Juan Thomassie, Students from Ohio University's school of Film and the Theater programs served as crew members and actors, and Hocking College contributed to the project by assisting with the project's development and production."
When asked about the future of the project, Love stated that the project is complete and has moved into the distribution and testing phase. Statistically, the MESP Project's early survey results have shown statistically significant results in terms of the project's effectiveness in improving medical provider attitudes towards the patient groups presented. "We are now in year three of the MESP project which is dedicated toward the distribution of both the conference and website versions of the project," said Love. To learn more about the project, check out the website where you can experience the project yourself! For more specific questions, a conference can be scheduled with Matt Love at lovem1@ohio.edu.
The McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies strives to offer the best academic programs in the IT (Information Technology), the game development and the Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) industries. Our programs and certificates cover numerous aspects of the rapidly changing industries of information networking, information security, data privacy, game development, digital animation and the academic side of esports.