Queen Elizabeth Hospital plans to make a personalised virtual-reality service a regular offering in its palliative-care department, with a trial also being considered in intensive care. The service is aimed at late-stage patients receiving palliative care who are confined to bed for long periods.
Two occupational therapists use their own time to visit places requested by patients, film them and turn the footage into VR videos for viewing at the bedside.
The videos are intended to help patients revisit places that hold personal meaning or recall important moments from their lives. The service has been provided to about 20 patients, or more than 20 according to separate reports, so no single exact total is given.
i-CABLE reported that the therapists began making the videos about a year before its 24 August 2026 report. One example involved a patient using VR to revisit Lung Mei Beach in Tai Po and remember the time she had spent there with her husband.
After a patient watches the footage, the therapists provide a VR card containing the video so it can be viewed again later.
The reported results have been encouraging but were not presented as a formal assessment of clinical effectiveness. i-CABLE said most patients experienced less anxiety and pain, while the manager of the hospital’s occupational-therapy department said pain scores fell by an average of 1.5 points, described as a change from moderate to mild pain. The report did not give the number of patients assessed, the scoring scale or details of any comparison.
The hospital plans to incorporate the service routinely into palliative care and try it in the intensive-care unit. The supplied reports did not provide a timetable for either step or details of which intensive-care patients would be eligible.