XRA HOSTS SECOND XRx HEALTHCARE SUMMIT WORKSHOP FOCUSED ON PATIENT EXPERIENCE

On September 23, 2026, the XR Association (XRA), the University of Maryland’s Institute for Health Computing (IHC) and the Medical Innovations in Extended Reality Center (MIXR) hosted the second workshop of the XRx Healthcare Summit. The Summit is a working forum that convenes leading health systems, clinicians, payers, patients, technologists, and policymakers to identify concrete pathways for scaling XR in care delivery, workforce training and health system operations. The broader goal of the Summit is to address the question: Why hasn’t XR scaled in health care, and what can be done to change that?

The second workshop focused on the patient experience, bringing leaders and subject matter experts together to discuss the impact of XR technology on patient care. Participants explored patient adoption, trust, accessibility, safety, and implementation, examining why immersive technologies have not yet scaled broadly in hospital and health care settings and where XR is already creating value for patients.

Discussion throughout the day highlighted several persistent challenges, including barriers to trust, access, comfort, caregiver support, reimbursement, safety, evidence, and implementation. The workshop underscored that XR adoption in health care is not primarily a hardware problem. The pathway to scale depends on demonstrating value in terms that health systems, payers, clinicians, patients, and IT departments recognize, including improved outcomes, lower costs, better access, reduced burden, safer care, and a stronger patient experience.

The discussion also highlighted opportunities where XR supports broader care goals rather than functioning as a standalone intervention. Value-based care, immersive telehealth, workforce and caregiver training, complication reduction and community-based access emerged as particularly promising areas.

Participants supported moving beyond one-off pilots toward shared evidence, implementation standards, and coordinated industry action. Findings from this workshop and the spring workshop focused on clinicians will be synthesized into an XRx Healthcare report that includes a practical set of collective initiatives and recommendations.