01
Documents a practitioner-centered collaboration process for building clinically meaningful VR therapy prototypes.
Jonathan Segal Research
XR-health collaboration and clinical VR prototyping
Practitioner-Centered Design
A case study of how HCI and clinical teams collaborated to build prototype VR environments for PTSD and moral injury treatment among health care workers.
virtual reality therapyclinician collaborationmoral injuryprototype design
Venue
J. Med. XR 3(1), 14-23
Method
Case study
Domain
VR therapy prototyping
Focus
Health care workers
The page currently uses the first page of the PDF. A virtual ICU screenshot or approved project still would make this page much stronger.
Abstract
Virtual reality-based psychotherapies require close collaboration between technical and clinical experts. This case study describes an HCI-clinician collaboration developing prototype immersive environments for posttraumatic stress disorder and moral injury in health care workers. It details how the team established communication, navigated differences in expectations and disciplinary knowledge, and used bridge roles, shared artifacts, and iterative feedback to align clinical goals with technical design decisions.
Contributions
02
Describes the bridge role as a practical mechanism for translating clinical goals, technical constraints, terminology, and feedback.
03
Distills guidelines for XR-health collaborations, including staged fidelity, privacy-aware data paths, shared change logs, and cue prioritization.
Project structure
What the page should communicate
Context
Building therapeutic environments across disciplines
The project joined HCI researchers, clinicians, and research staff to prototype VR ICU environments for health care workers affected by PTSD and moral injury after COVID-19 care work.
Process
Bridge roles and shared artifacts
The collaboration relied on bridge members, screenshots, videos, change logs, and iterative walkthroughs to make clinical requirements and technical constraints legible to the whole team.
Outcome
Guidelines for XR-health work
The paper offers practical recommendations for future teams: define bridge responsibilities early, align communication norms, prototype with neutral placeholders, prioritize clinical realism cues, and handle privacy constraints at the start.
Figure strip
Replaceable visual modules
These panels are intentionally data-backed placeholders. Once you provide approved figures, videos, or screenshots, this area can become a polished gallery like a standard academic project page.
Stage 1
Information gathering
Clinical experts and health care workers helped identify ICU details, sounds, and scenarios that mattered.
Stage 2
Prototype building
The HCI team used existing assets, neutral placeholders, and iterative builds to test fidelity and flow.
Stage 3
Deployment planning
The team addressed headset performance, local storage, HIPAA concerns, and repeatable setup materials.
Citation
Segal, J. I., Turman, M. L., Emrich, M., McLeod Daphnis, S. I., Rodriguez, S., Difede, J. A., & Won, A. S. (2026). Practitioner-centered design: A case study of a human-computer interaction-clinician collaboration on the development of prototype virtual reality environments for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and moral injury in health care workers. Journal of Medical Extended Reality, 3(1), 14-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/29941520261419919
Still needed
- Approved VR ICU screenshot, video still, or teaser clip.
- Code, demo, OSF, project page, or data availability links if public.
- BibTeX entry if you want a copy citation block.
- Funding/acknowledgment text if you want it surfaced on-page.
- Any patient-safety, privacy, or IRB wording you want visible beyond the article text.