Our Work / Industries

Healthcare & Medical

Immersive simulations and virtual learning environments help healthcare professionals build real-world capabilities without real-world risk. Our healthcare work centres on giving clinical and hospital staff a safe place to rehearse difficult conversations, bias awareness and psychologically safe communication, skills that are hard to practise any other way.

Key takeaway

PTR's healthcare work gives clinical staff a safe place to rehearse feedback conversations and bias awareness in VR. The Mater pilot reports strong self-assessed engagement; the Mayo Clinic programme is backed by peer-reviewed, published research.

Two animated avatars in blue Mater-branded scrubs, standing in a hospital reception area, with text overlay reading 'Healthcare & Medical Training'.

Work in this sector

Mater Education: Speaking with Good Judgement

Mater Education, part of the Mater hospital group in Queensland, worked with PTR, Mater Foundation and Advance Queensland to bring its Speaking with Good Judgement program into VR, letting staff practise feedback conversations inside branched, 360-degree recreations of real Mater environments, delivered face-to-face to more than 60 staff. Mater's own program evaluation reported:

93%

enjoyed the experience, per Mater's own program evaluation.

90%

reported better focus than standard delivery, per Mater.

77%

found VR more engaging than traditional delivery, per Mater.

96%

wanted more VR-based learning, per Mater.

Stills from the branded Mater VR build: scenes from the Speaking with Good Judgement training environments.
A corridor scene from the branded Mater VR build.

Build stills from the Mater Education Speaking with Good Judgement VR pilot.

These are Mater's own reported program-evaluation figures from a single pilot, not an independently peer-reviewed study. Independent of PTR, VR-based "speaking up" simulation training for patient safety is itself an active research area: a 2025 quasi-experimental study of immersive VR speak-up training for novice nurses, published in the peer-reviewed journal Healthcare, found the approach a feasible way to build the same speaking-up and feedback skills SWGJ targets, though on a small sample (36 nurses) that the authors themselves flag as needing larger replication.

Read the Mater Education case study

Mayo Clinic: A Day In a Lifetime

Build still of the VR training environment developed with Equal Reality for Mayo Clinic nurse and social worker leaders.

At Mayo Clinic in the United States, nurse and social worker leaders took part in A Day In a Lifetime, a VR series co-designed with the Mayo Clinic team and built by Equal Reality, the DEI-focused VR studio linked to PTR co-founder Leonie Sanderson. The programme reached 1,149 nurse and social worker leaders, and two peer-reviewed papers found statistically significant gains in empathy and willingness to act as an upstander, with most gains still present six to eight months later.

Read the Mayo Clinic case study · Full peer-reviewed research

XRHealth Australia: transport and recovery

With XRHealth Australia, PTR builds immersive experiences that reintroduce the driving environment at a controlled pace, with guided regulation and confidence-building scenarios for people recovering after critical incidents.

Healthcare educators have given similar feedback directly: "PTR demonstrated a profound understanding of the intricacies of human behaviour." - Keia Hobbs, MD, University of Illinois Chicago

Where the evidence is strongest, and where it is not

The strength of evidence differs across the work on this page. Mayo Clinic's outcomes are documented in two peer-reviewed papers with a 6 to 8 month follow-up. Mater's figures are a single pilot's self-reported program evaluation, useful as a real result but not a controlled study. XRHealth Australia and the University of Illinois Chicago quotes are delivery testimonials, not outcomes data. Read each figure with its source in mind rather than treating every number on this page as the same kind of evidence.

What these conversations look like

Three of the moments PTR builds practice for in clinical teams. These are rendered illustrations, not footage from a client build.

Rehearsing the hard conversation before it has to happen for real.
The bedside conversation, practised in a ward that looks like the ward.
Noticing something on the ward, and deciding whether to say it.
Martine McCash
"Over the past six months, XRHealth Australia has worked closely with People Tech Revolution to co-design innovative immersive applications for a WorkSafe Victoria-funded pilot supporting workplace mental health and recovery in the transport industry. Simon and his team have been exceptional collaborators: creative, responsive and genuinely committed to human-centred design. Their ability to understand clinical and operational needs and translate complex ideas into safe, realistic VR environments has made the partnership both productive and enjoyable. Together, we are developing practical, evidence-informed tools that build confidence, resilience and coping strategies through structured, real-world scenarios. I highly recommend People Tech Revolution as a trusted technology partner."
Martine McCash, Vice President - Services, XRHealth Australia