The ninth R+D+I ICT Health and Social Seminars will feature more than 20 multidisciplinary speakers who are leaders in virtual and augmented reality

El Sucre building in Vic will host the ninth R+D+I ICT Health and Social Seminar, the fourth to be held in the capital of the Osona region, which is entitled “Virtual and augmented reality: the technology that is transforming the present”. The UVic-UCC and the ITC Health Social Foundation, with other healthcare institutions, are organising seminars over the coming days that are expected to be attended by more than 170 people, and most of them are healthcare and technology professionals. This year, the theme will be virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), which is becoming another major technology in the healthcare field. Unlike previous years, registration is free, and must be arranged by 20 October via the following  link.

The seminars will once again last one day, and aim to highlight the utilities and potential of VR/AR applied to health, to present projects that are already under way in various healthcare institutions all over the country, and to create a forum for dialogue between health professionals, companies and government bodies to assess how virtual reality can be incorporated in this field. The Seminars are also a leading platform for knowledge transfer, which contributes to aligning the fields of research and innovation, business and healthcare for convergence on solutions with greater added value. According to Marina Geli, director of the Centre for Health and Social Care Research at the UVic-UCC, “these seminars give added value to the territory, to the Catalan health sector, to teaching and businesses in an area that is not a window on the future, but is in fact the present reality.”

Seminars with leading professionals

The seminars will begin at 9 am with the speech by the General Secretary of the Ministry of Health of the Government of Catalonia, Laura Pelay, the rector of the UVic-UCC, Josep-Eladi Baños, and a representative of Vic Town Council. This will be followed by a presentation by the Catalan Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Health interest group, an initiative which according to the corporate development director of the ITC Health and Social Foundation and coordinator of the ITC Social Health Chair at the UVic-UCC, Sílvia Cufí, "aims to lay the foundations for promoting technologies in this field and evaluating how to apply them to health, so that the majority of the stakeholders in the territory can actively participate. In short, we want to bring together the various initiatives, professionals and managers in order to join forces and foster innovation among the different institutions in the ecosystem in order to examine how to implement them all over the country in a sustainable and integrated way."

This will be followed by the first framework lecture, which is entitled "Immersive Experiences in the Health and Social Sector: Present and Future," and will be given by Xavi Conesa and Jaume Vaccaro, from the company Visyon 360. This is a leading company in conducting scientific research to understand the workings of the brain using virtual reality and from there, designing practical solutions to improve health. The company is also working on social innovation projects to make positive changes to society in health, education and the environment, among other areas.

The application of virtual reality in the major Catalan hospitals

The Seminars, which will be led by the journalist Núria Jar, will also present solutions for the practical application of VR and AR in Catalan health institutions, involving projects by Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, the Consorci Sanitari Integral, the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona, Parc Taulí, Vall d'Hebron Hospital and the Guttmann Institute. The lecture on "Augmented Reality vs. Virtual reality," by Jordi Boza from EyeTechLab, will show us the differences between the two technologies, and the advantages and/or disadvantages of working with each one. For example, EyeTechLab works with Sony, supplying its technology in augmented reality devices.

In the afternoon, there will be a second framework lecture entitled "How 5G will impact on VR/AR." This presentation will be given by Sergi Figuerola of i2CAT and the 5GBCN project, a public-private initiative that is working to transform the Barcelona metropolitan area into an open laboratory across the entire city for validating and adopting 5G technologies. He will be joined by Dr Borja de Lacy, a surgeon at the Hospital Clínic and member of AIS Channel, a company working on telecare, i.e. remote mentoring or care. The final activity in the seminars will be the public-private Dialogues on "From the clinical need to collaboration with the start-up", with the experience of the spin-off project leaders Virtual Bodyworks, Nixi for Children, Psious and Biel Glasses. The institutional closing ceremony of this ninth seminar will take place at 5.30 pm.

The UVic-UCC is organising the seminars through the ITC Health and Social Chair, promoted by the ICT Social Health Foundation and the UVic-UCC, linked to the Centre for Health and Social Care Research (CESS), as well as the ICT Social Health Foundation, the Hospital Consortium of Vic, the Catalan Health Institute, the Santa Creu de Vic Hospital Foundation, the EBA Vic, the EBA Centelles and the Althaia Foundation. Other partners include the Government of Catalonia, Vic Town Council, the Chair in Social Services and the Faculty of Medicine of the UVic-UCC, COPLEFEC, M4Social and the committee of third sector institutions in Catalonia as strategic partners, and the technical office of the Osona Foundation for Health Research and Education (FORES). Finally, the event is sponsored by companies including SEIDOR, the seminar's platinum sponsor, and other companies such as ISERN, Lenovo, Athenea Solutions (MedXat), who will also be participating.