It is one of the requests that reaches us with the most enthusiasm and the least preparation: we want this in the delivery suite. The enthusiasm is grounded in the literature. The preparation is what decides whether it survives week three.
What the evidence shows
Two syntheses, and what each adds.
A systematic review with meta-analysis in JMIR Serious Games pooled 12 studies with 1095 participants, searched across seven databases, on virtual reality in pregnancy and childbirth. It assessed pain, anxiety, labour duration, satisfaction and adverse events — and that last outcome is the one a service cares about: the review was designed to answer safety, not only efficacy.
A 2025 integrative review in Pain Management Nursing screened 1227 studies and included 13 (10 of them randomised trials), adding to the quantitative results the women's own experience — usually the part missing from meta-analyses.
Read together, without stretching: the trials point consistently to reduced reported pain and anxiety during labour, with good acceptability and no signal of harm. And, as the authors themselves note, heterogeneity between studies is high and sample sizes are small for something as variable as birth. Encouraging evidence, not settled evidence.
One thing the literature does not say, and no supplier should imply: this is not analgesia and replaces no decision about analgesia. It does not change the indication for an epidural, does not treat pain, and is not a clinical decision tool.
Why labour is a favourable case
Three reasons, and they explain why results show up even in small trials:
- Pain has a large attentional component, and the gap between contractions is a natural window to work on it — the mechanism we describe in pain management.
- Anticipatory anxiety amplifies pain. Someone arriving frightened feels more, the same pattern seen in pre-operative anxiety.
- The person is awake, engaged and has time. Unlike almost anything else in a hospital.
The five questions that decide, none of them about content
This is where projects fail, and no better catalogue solves any of them.
1. Who interrupts? The woman must be able to take the headset off in one second, without asking, without hunting for a button. If that answer is not immediate and obvious, nothing else matters. It is the rule we already apply in when someone refuses.
2. Who runs it? A session in labour happens during active clinical work and cannot add a person to the room. Either the team already there can run it with usage training — see who can run a session — or the equipment stays in the cupboard.
3. How is it cleaned between two women? A delivery suite has its own protocol, and equipment that does not fit it does not come in. Our answers are in hygiene and safety, and the right question to ask us is the reprocessing time, not the material.
4. What about monitoring? Cardiotocography, lines, the woman's mobility and position. The equipment must coexist with all of it — and the honest answer is that this depends on the room, not the product.
5. When is it offered? An offer made in active labour is a bad offer. Consent belongs in the birth plan, discussed beforehand, with the full picture — including that it can be refused without explanation. Same principle as informed consent.
Nausea, which here is a question of its own
Vestibular discomfort is rare and mild with well-chosen content, as we wrote in comfort and motion sickness. In labour there is an added difficulty: nausea is common for reasons that have nothing to do with the headset — transition itself, analgesia, fasting.
The practical consequence is about recording, not content: if nausea occurs, nobody will be able to say afterwards what caused it. Record what was used and when, so the team neither blames the equipment for a symptom that was coming anyway, nor the reverse.
Where RVer stands
Plainly: we do not have an obstetric product. The base product is a content library for comfort, distraction and activity, registered as a Class I medical device, with no treatment claim and no specific indication for labour.
A service wanting to test this in a delivery suite can do so with the base product — and should do it as a pilot, with the five questions above answered in writing before the first woman tries it. If those answers do not exist, our recommendation is to start somewhere simpler and come back to the delivery suite later.
The RVer platform's base product is a Class I medical device registered with Infarmed. Sessions are run by the institution's own professionals, complement existing care and do not replace analgesia, assessment or clinical follow-up.