Virtual Reality Lets Med Students Experience What It’s Like To Be 74 - Elyse Wanshel, Huffington Post

Elder care is about to become much more empathetic. Embodied Labs has come up with a new virtual reality program called “We Are Alfred,” which allows young medical students to feel what it’s like to be an elderly individual experiencing audio and visual problems. “[Medical students] are usually in their early 20s and not experiencing those kinds of challenges yet, so we decided to create something that would give them the experience of what it might be like to go through the aging process,” Carrie Shaw, the program’s creator and master’s student in biomedical visualization told University of Illinois at Chicago, where she studies. This could be empathy 2.0 for the average med student, who is 24. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/we-are-alfred-embodied-labs-carrie-shaw-virtual-reality-medical-students-elderly-geriatric-care_us_57505bbce4b0c3752dccbeaa