From emerging technology to practical healthcare value
Augmented reality and virtual reality are becoming more relevant in healthcare as providers look for better ways to deliver information, guide patients, and support care more effectively. AR adds digital content to the physical world, while VR creates immersive environments that can inform, simulate, and train with greater depth than conventional interfaces. What once felt experimental is moving closer to practical use across everyday healthcare settings.
That momentum is also visible in the market outlook. Fortune Business Insights projects the global virtual reality healthcare market to reach USD 46.37 billion by 2032, pointing to growing adoption across the sector. At the same time, emerging clinical and training evidence suggests AR and VR are beginning to deliver practical value, strengthening their position as technologies with real potential to improve care delivery and patient experience.
The operational challenge behind the patient journey
In many hospitals, challenges affecting patient experience arise well before clinical treatment begins. Patients and caregivers often encounter fragmented information across multiple systems and touchpoints. Routine interactions, such as orientation, service requests, status updates, and coordination, still rely heavily on manual workflows and direct staff involvement, even when these processes are repetitive and standardized.
At the same time, workforce constraints continue to intensify. The World Health Organization estimates a global shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, increasing pressure on care teams to manage both clinical and non-clinical demands more efficiently. In that environment, hospitals are under increasing pressure to make patient-facing processes more consistent, more efficient, and less dependent on labor-intensive coordination.
Immersive technology in everyday hospital care
AR and VR are drawing greater interest in hospital settings because they can improve some of the most fragmented parts of the care experience. In the right applications, they can help patients absorb information more easily, prepare more confidently for procedures, and navigate unfamiliar environments with greater clarity. They are also being explored in areas such as rehabilitation, virtual care, and guided support, where immersive tools can expand access when in-person care is limited, make certain interventions less intimidating, and give providers new ways to deliver education and engagement. In practical terms, their strongest value often lies in making care environments easier to understand and services easier to access for both patients and caregivers.
These patterns are beginning to emerge most clearly in healthcare systems that have already invested in digital care foundations. A similar direction is evident in FPT’s work in the Nordics, where a virtual care platform was developed to connect healthcare, social care, and long-term care through digital clinics, aged care, and remote consultation modules. Delivering 99.99 percent SLA accessibility and supporting more than 1.5 million virtual care visits across multiple healthcare municipalities, the program shows how connected digital care can scale across distributed service environments when the platform foundation is strong enough.
Their promise, however, comes with practical constraints. Immersive tools can also introduce risks such as dizziness, fatigue, head and neck strain, display or image errors, distraction in clinical environments, and cybersecurity or privacy concerns. Their role in healthcare is therefore becoming more defined not by broad experimentation, but by narrower, better-governed use cases where the clinical or operational value is clear and the risks can be managed responsibly.
From immersive potential to hospital application
Turning that potential into practical hospital value depends not only on the technology itself, but on the partner’s ability to apply it within the realities of care delivery, integration, and scale.
That experience is reflected in FPT’s collaboration with IHH Healthcare Singapore. Through the LizWorld platform, FPT brought AR into a broader digital experience built around the patient journey. Patients could log in securely through wrist tags, access personalized content and services, and use a guided digital room interface in place of standard verbal briefings. Meal ordering, amenities requests, medication delivery, discharge arrangements, billing updates, and real-time notifications were brought together in one connected interface. The project was recognized in the Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Healthcare category at the Singapore Business Review Technology Excellence Awards 2026.
FPT representatives at the Singapore Business Review Technology Excellence Awards 2026
The impact extended across both patient experience and hospital operations. Patient orientation time fell from 12 minutes to eight minutes, contributing to an estimated 800 staff hours saved annually. Waiting time for service requests dropped from 40 minutes to 20 minutes, while each request required 12 minutes less nursing time, adding up to 120 hours saved each year. Printed materials were also reduced, cutting paper usage by 1,250 kilograms annually and generating 60,000 dollars in printing cost savings. Built around the realities of hospital operations, LizWorld was designed as a scalable, secure solution that could integrate with existing systems and support future innovation through data integration and intelligent automation.
FPT’s healthcare capabilities span interoperability, virtual care, patient engagement, and integrated hospital systems, providing a stronger foundation for digital transformation in regulated care environments. These healthcare capabilities are reinforced by a delivery foundation built for scale, security, and long-term execution, supported by more than 25,000 AI-augmented engineers and thousands of certified professionals across FPT’s global network. FPT’s Healthcare Center of Excellence adds another layer of strength through domain and compliance expertise across standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, and HL7 FHIR. Combined with a broader delivery network and technology ecosystem, this foundation supports secure integration, scalability, and long-term operational fit.
In that context, the IHH Healthcare Singapore collaboration represents more than a successful AR application. The project illustrates a wider ability to turn digital initiatives into connected healthcare solutions built for sustained adoption.
The road ahead
AR and VR are unlikely to gain lasting relevance in healthcare through novelty alone. Continued adoption will depend on whether these technologies can address persistent operational challenges such as staff capacity constraints, communication complexity, and administrative workload, while fitting safely into regulated care environments.
As healthcare environments face sustained pressure to deliver better experiences with fewer resources, immersive technologies, when embedded into workflows rather than layered on top, are likely to become part of the sector’s digital foundation. Their long-term role will be less about novelty and more about helping patients understand care more easily, giving providers more efficient ways to coordinate services, and easing some of the operational strain that continues to shape everyday healthcare delivery.
