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Using virtual reality simulation to improve hospital care for children with autism spectrum disorder
- Roshni DasMedical student at King’s College London
Key points
- VR based simulation training is proposed to improve the management of children with autism spectrum disorder in hospital.
- Research found that it improves clinicians' skills, confidence and competence in dealing with these children.
- The literature has small sample sizes and incorrect protocols, so a large-scale study and a national registry are suggested.
Roshni Das, a medical student at King’s College London, provides insights into her research focused on improving the management of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in hospital settings. The discussion highlights the challenges paediatricians face when caring for children with ASD and introduces a novel solution: virtual reality (VR)-based simulation training for clinicians. Initial findings indicate that VR training enhances clinicians’ skills, confidence, and competence in managing these patients. However, Roshni notes the current evidence base is limited by small sample sizes and inconsistent protocols. To address this, she advocates for large-scale studies and the establishment of a national registry to improve training processes. Roshni outlines plans for a large audit across multiple hospitals and the inclusion of focus groups with clinicians, patients, and parents to further evaluate the benefits of VR-based training. This interview took place at the RCPCH conference 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Read the transcript
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors, so check it against the video before quoting.
So my research has been based around managing children with autism spectrum disorder in hospitals and that can be quite challenging for paediatricians to deal with. So our solution is to use VR based simulation training in order to improve the management of children with autism spectrum disorder.
So some of the main things we found out from our research is that it improves clinicians' skills, confidence and their competence in dealing with these children. However, there's a lot of lack of evidence in the literature using small sample sizes and incorrect protocols. So, we suggest that to expand this research base, this should be introduced as a large-scale study and to establish a national registry of these patients in order to improve the training processes.
And we are going to conduct a large scale audit across various hospitals in order to see the benefits of this and test it and involve focus groups with clinicians and patients and their parents as well in order to figure out the benefits of this training.
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Roshni Das. “Using virtual reality simulation to improve hospital care for children with autism spectrum disorder.” The Paediatric Video Journal, 23 June 2025. https://paediatricvj.com/videos/using-virtual-reality-simulation-to-improve-hospital-care-for-das/
This interview is educational content intended for healthcare professionals and is not medical advice. Views expressed are those of the speaker. © The Paediatric Video Journal. All rights reserved.