FDA Launches Virtual Reality Idea Lab for In-Home Care

SILVER SPRING, Maryland—The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a product center of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that aims to protect and promote public health, announced the launch of its Idea Lab as part of its home as a health care hub initiative. The Idea Lab aims to help users reimagine the home as an integral part of the health care system by offering a virtual reality prototype, “Lilypad,” to give users an immersive experience inside various affordable homes of representative people living with diabetes. The virtual reality idea lab intends to provide users with a realistic look into the daily challenges and barriers people face navigating medical conditions.

The Idea Lab will include insights from patients, caregivers, providers and experts, as well as tours of different types of affordable housing environments and landscape research into design opportunities. The company said these insights are intended to help the FDA, innovators and other interested parties better understand how current medical devices fit into people’s homes and lives. 

The company said its goal in launching the Idea Lab is to help developers consider design approaches, as well as encourage providers to consider opportunities to educate patients and extend care options tailored to a home-based approach. Additionally, the company hopes to create discussions around transforming care paradigms and foster opportunities to bring clinical trials and other evidence generation processes to patients through use of medical technologies in the home.