🩺 Medical anxiety’s new BFF

We can barely even handle reality-reality and now we’ve got augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality?

It all falls under one umbrella term — extended reality (XR) — but they’re all a little different. With Big Tech firms like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta scrambling to launch new and better headsets, we’re here to break down what they mean.

How it works

Virtual reality (VR) is 100% virtual — you’re completely immersed in a simulated, 3D environment, typically using a headset. If you walk around too much, you might run into a very real wall.

Augmented reality (AR) environments allow you to still see the real world, but superimpose digital content on top using a phone, tablet, or headset.

For example:

• Niantic’s Pokemon Go: players see creatures through their phone’s camera overlaid on the real world
• TikTok or Snapchat filters
• SkyView: an app that helps users locate constellations and planets in the night sky

Here’s where it gets really fun

Mixed reality (MR) combines the physical and digital worlds using a headset.

For example, you might be in a virtual world, but you can physically interact with objects. Or, you might be able to see the real world but still interact with the virtual objects.

• At Dreamscape Immersive locations, players can “pet” aliens.
• See how people use Skype with Microsoft’s HoloLens.
• Check out VRScout’s breakdown of how the Meta Quest Pro’s full-color passthrough enables MR.

Why do we need this?

For fun, obviously. (Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy walking around your neighborhood looking for Pikachu!)

But extended reality also has myriad applications in remote work, job training, and even surgery.

And now: Here’s a cover of “Virtual Insanity” done entirely in virtual reality.

The ordinary person fears the unknown, but if you have disposable income, you can be extraordinary and elect to fear, well, every conceivable known.

Fast-expanding startup Prenuvo offers three MRI scan options, ranging from $999 to $2.5k, that can screen the head, torso, or full body, for nearly all imaginable health maladies.

• Patients pay a hefty out-of-pocket sum — no insurers are on board yet, and scans are recommended annually — to visit a Prenuvo clinic and rendezvous with an MRI machine.
• Prenuvo currently has eight locations, with five more “coming in 2023” and another three earmarked for 2024.

What happens during these scans?

Scans differ in length, from a very claustrophobic 20 minutes to a very, very claustrophobic 60 minutes, and contain no radiation.

• Prenuvo says it screens for 500 common and rare conditions. It can detect most tumors, aneurysms, and cysts, and find cancers early.
• Included in the fees: a nurse practitioner calls to go over results following each scan.

Who has endorsed this?

Oh, wow, shocker — Prenuvo’s CEO Andrew Lacy is into it. “When I got a body scan, I learned more about my health than the health system had told me my entire life,” Lacy told Axios.

The American College of Preventive Medicine, however, is not. Medical experts only recommend whole-body scans when symptoms call for it, warning scanning can bring little benefit, and exhaust money and health care resources.

• Prenuvo’s site concedes that “less than 5% of customers receive ‘life-altering’ news” following a scan.

However, the “experts” many Americans care about most — celebs — apparently love it. Per People, Maria Menounos, Paris Hilton, and Cindy Crawford have all met the machine.