VR experience wins 3rd place in Bea World Best Event Awards
App developed in Erlangen and Cologne helps patients with systemic lupus erythematosus
Sandra Jeleazcov from Department of Medicine 3 – Rheumatology and Immunology at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen celebrates a major success: The head of Knowledge Management worked together with a team from the Cologne-based company onliveline GmbH Büro für Transformation & Storytelling to develop an app that paves the way for new approaches to patient communication. Using virtual reality (VR), the application was used within the context of a survey to inform patients suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus about the rare immune disease. Users put on a VR headset, immerse themselves in the app and experience how treatment progresses and what happens in the body during treatment. This digital project has now won third prize in the Bea World Best Event Awards in the category “Digital Event”.
“We are very pleased to receive this international award,” says Sandra Jeleazcov. “At the moment, it is still a prototype, but we hope to be able to integrate it into clinical patient care in 2024 already. The award confirms that we are not the only ones to be excited by this form of communication.” As well as the knowledge manager from Erlangen, a team from the Cologne-based company onliveline GmbH Büro für Transformation & Storytelling was involved in developing the app, and expert advice was provided by Prof. Dr. Stefan Uderhardt, head of the working group at Medicine 3, and PD Dr. Michael Aigner, head of the working group at Department of Medicine 5 – Hematology and Oncology (Director: Prof. Dr. Andreas Mackensen) at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen. “In a strongly interdisciplinary team, we succeeded in developing the app predominantly in virtual reality within just nine months,” explains Sandra Jeleazcov. “In summer, we were able to introduce the prototype to our first patients who had received CAR T cell therapy. This allowed us to integrate their impressions and their personal experiences of treatment into the app.”
Plans are in place to integrate the app into treatment next year as part of a clinical study, using it to provide an information session for patients. During this session, patients and possibly their close relatives meet with a member of staff from the Department of Medicine 3 at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen in a virtual reality setting and are led through the app by this person. They experience cell interactions and can ask questions in order to gain a better understanding of the treatment and the mechanisms behind it.
Bea World Best Event Awards
The Best Event Awards are awarded in several different categories during the Bea World Festival – The International Festival of Events and Live Communication. Awards are presented for the most innovative events in the area of communication over the past year.
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