Updated 16 August 2026.
When an institution considers adopting virtual reality for clinical use, the first question is usually "how much does it cost?". It is the wrong question to start with — or at least half a question. The price of the equipment is the easiest and most visible part of the sum.
This page is the starting point for the topic: what goes into the cost, where the return sits in each setting, and what cannot be proven. Each section points to the article that develops it.
First: there is no single sum, there are three
The most common mistake is applying a hospital's arithmetic to a house that is not a hospital. The levers differ, and some simply do not exist:
| Setting | What dominates the sum | Where to go deeper |
|---|---|---|
| Hospital and clinic | procedure time, sedation, missed appointments | where the saving is |
| Care home | occupancy, staff time per activity | what it returns in a care home |
| Either one | what the economic evidence supports | the ROI nobody can prove |
A care home has no theatre and no sedation to avoid. A hospital does not fix bed occupancy with an activity. Starting from the right sum saves half a meeting.
The total cost, line by line
The price of the solution — equipment and subscription — is the line everyone sees. The other four decide whether the investment pays for itself:
- Staff time. The largest of them all and the most forgotten. A session is about five minutes to choose and fit the headset, plus the session itself. Multiplied by your team's real hourly cost, that is the recurring cost that counts.
- Hygiene between uses. A short routine, but it exists and it takes minutes. It is described in equipment hygiene and safety.
- Initial training. How long until the team is operational without supervision. If it is long, the equipment ends up in a cupboard.
- Space and logistics. Where it lives, who prepares it, how it moves between floors or services.
The more friction at each of these points, the higher the real cost — whatever the invoice says.
The return is measured in use, not in the purchase
Equipment bought and rarely used returns zero, however good the technology. Which is why the metric that best predicts the value of an installation is the simplest one: sessions delivered per week.
Anything that adds friction — a missing cable, a password nobody knows, a hygiene routine that takes too long, depending on hospital Wi-Fi — cuts usage and, with it, the return. That is why the content lives on the headset and does not depend on the network.
What does not belong in the sum
Do not count on reduced medication, fewer falls or clinical improvement. There are no trials supporting those lines for our product, and putting them in a tender builds a case that does not survive the first hard question.
The economic literature on virtual reality in healthcare is thin: of the 87 studies in our public library, eight are about cost and return, all from very specific contexts. Why their numbers are not yours is explained in the ROI nobody can prove.
How to prove it before buying
A three-month pilot answers better than any brochure, as long as you decide beforehand what you are going to count. Four metrics are enough: sessions delivered, who took part who did not before, real staff time per session, and refusals or interruptions.
None is clinical — deliberately. A pilot answers implementation questions and does not answer efficacy. How to design one is in how to run a pilot, and how to write requirements without asking for things that do not exist is in the tender document.
And if the budget does not stretch this year
There is more than one route, and not all require upfront investment. The options — operating budget, grants, alternatives to investment — are in how to fund it.
In short
| If you are… | Start with |
|---|---|
| A hospital or clinic | the four savings levers |
| A care home | the occupancy sum |
| Going to tender | the tender document |
| Justifying it to management | the three-month pilot |
Nothing on this page is an efficacy claim. The Class I medical device registration (Infarmed) covers the base product and concerns regulatory conformity, not clinical performance. Decisions about the care plan always belong to the clinical team.
RVer is a virtual reality system for clinical use designed for healthcare settings, whose base product is registered as a Class I Medical Device with Infarmed (CDM 94571546) and bears the CE mark under MDR 2017/745. The RVer Motion, RVer Neuro and RVer Exposure modules are in development and are not covered by that registration.