Immersive VR Medical Education for Pharmaceutical Engagement
The Brief
Diabetes is a condition that is widely discussed but often poorly understood beyond surface-level information. The brief was to promote learning and understanding of diabetes management through VR medical education in a way that felt engaging, memorable, and appropriate for a corporate pharmaceutical audience.
Alongside this, the experience needed to stand out in a busy conference environment, using interactivity to attract attention and encourage meaningful engagement rather than passive viewing.
What We Did
Working alongside an award-winning digital healthcare agency, we contributed to the development of a Virtual Reality experience called Diabetes Voyager, utilising Xbox Kinect for interaction. Our role focused on the creation of in-game 3D models, animation, and lighting, built using Maya and Unity.
The VR medical experience invited users to travel inside the body of a diabetic patient, exploring key areas including the heart, brain, and vascular system. Within this immersive environment, users encountered challenges linked to diabetes management, allowing complex medical concepts to be explored visually and interactively.
Rather than relying on traditional messaging, the experience used immersion and exploration to support understanding. By placing delegates inside the problem space, Diabetes Voyager helped transform abstract medical information into something tangible and easier to remember.
Why a VR Medical Experience Worked for Pharma Marketing
Virtual reality offered a different way to communicate medical information in a corporate setting. Instead of asking delegates to read or watch, Diabetes Voyager encouraged them to take part. This shift from observation to participation proved highly effective in capturing attention and extending engagement time.
The Oculus demonstrated strong potential as a platform for pharmaceutical education and engagement, particularly in event environments where brands are competing for attention. The experience consistently drew interest, with 300 delegates engaging with Diabetes Voyager over the three-day conference, totalling 35 hours of immersive VR use and sustained queues at the stand.
For pharma marketing teams, VR medical education creates opportunities for deeper conversations, stronger recall, and a more meaningful connection with complex subject matter.
Outcome
Diabetes Voyager showed how immersive technology can be used to support pharmaceutical communication in a way that feels informative rather than promotional. It demonstrated that VR medical education can be a practical tool for education, engagement, and differentiation within the healthcare event space.
The project went on to win an awards and the RX Club Awards for global healthcare advertising, recognising its effectiveness as a healthcare communication experience.
“Virtual reality (VR) can be used to simulate rich, multimodal and highly controllable environments, which makes it a very useful technology in healthcare. From training healthcare professionals (HCPs) and rehabilitating patients to diagnosing and treating diseases, the variety of ways in which VR is being used is constantly growing. In this article, we will explore some of these uses, including how VR is helping investigators to understand the factors that influence how doctors respond to ethically challenging prescription situations.” Reference link
Client feedback:
“It was great to see so many customers completely blown away by what you have created and to be seen as such innovators from embracing and utilising this technology. While the Voyager focused on the field of diabetes, the technology employed has truly exciting potential across a wide range of therapy areas and communication challenges. One of the many opportunities discussed at the recent conference was the potential of this technology to engage with younger, apathetic patients in order to communicate the importance of medication adherence.”
Adam Boucher, Medical Education and Events Manager
