Last reviewed: November 2026. This guide is for general information and is not medical advice. Talk to a qualified clinician about any treatment decision.
Telemedicine means care delivered at a distance. Augmented reality (AR) is being tested as a way for a remote expert to guide someone on the spot, and virtual reality (VR) as a way to deliver therapy at home. Early studies are encouraging on feasibility, but few have tested these tools against ordinary video calls or in-person care over the long term.
Key takeaways
- Remote guidance: a 2023 review found 39 studies of AR in real-time telemedicine, mostly in surgery, emergency and hospital medicine.
- Performance: in comparative trials, AR-assisted guidance performed no worse than in-person guidance.
- Home therapy: for balance after stroke and in Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis, home VR with remote supervision did about as well as comparison treatments.
- Gaps: long-term outcomes and costs are rarely measured.
In this guide
How AR and VR are used in remote care
- Telementoring. A specialist in another location sees what the person on site sees and guides a procedure or examination in real time.
- Remote consultation. AR adds shared visual information to a live conversation between clinicians, or between clinician and patient.
- Telerehabilitation. Patients do VR-based exercises at home while a therapist monitors progress from a distance.
Remote guidance with AR
The most complete map of this area is a 2023 scoping review in JMIR mHealth and uHealth, which gathered 39 studies published between 2012 and 2022. They fell into three groups: evaluating patients, carrying out interventions, and education.
- What the tools do: in an earlier version of the review, the most common features were letting the remote expert draw on the local user’s view and showing the expert’s hands or instruments within it.
- What users said: feedback on usefulness, feasibility and acceptability was consistently positive.
- How it performed: where AR-assisted guidance was compared with in-person guidance, reliability and performance were no worse, and procedures did not consistently take longer.
- How it was measured: mostly by surveys and interviews. Time to complete a task was the most common objective measure.
The reviewers conclude that AR’s role as an alternative to existing telecommunication tools, or to being there in person, still has to be validated, and that the early stage of the technology has held back larger randomized and long-term studies.
Therapy at home with VR
A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis looked at home-based VR training combined with remote supervision for balance in people with Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis or stroke. It included seven randomized trials. The equipment was often a games console for training, paired with a video call or motion sensor for monitoring.
After treatment there was no significant difference in balance between the home VR groups and the comparison groups. The authors’ reading is practical: home-based VR with remote supervision can be used to extend conventional therapy. It was not shown to be better than it.
For more on VR in physical recovery, see our guide to virtual reality in rehabilitation.
Limits of the evidence
- Opinion over outcomes: most AR telemedicine studies report what users thought, not what happened to patients.
- Cost and long-term results: the 2023 review found these were rarely measured.
- Narrow coverage: many specialties, and uses where the person on site is not a clinician, have had little study.
- Practical barriers: the rehabilitation review notes that home programs are limited by cost and by access to equipment.
Questions to ask
- What does this add beyond a standard video visit?
- Who supplies and supports the equipment at home?
- How will a clinician monitor progress, and how often?
For the wider picture, see our guides to augmented reality in healthcare and virtual reality in healthcare.
Common questions
How is augmented reality used in telemedicine?
Mainly for remote guidance: a specialist elsewhere sees what the person on site sees and guides a procedure or examination in real time.
Is AR remote guidance as good as in-person guidance?
In comparative trials, AR-assisted guidance performed no worse than in-person guidance and did not consistently take longer. Long-term outcomes and costs have rarely been measured.
Does home-based VR rehabilitation work?
For balance in people with stroke, Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis, a review of seven trials found home VR with remote supervision did about as well as comparison treatments, not better.
Sources
- Dinh A, et al. Augmented Reality in Real-time Telemedicine and Telementoring: Scoping Review. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2023.
- Truijen S, et al. Effect of home-based virtual reality training and telerehabilitation on balance in individuals with Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, and stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Neurological Sciences, 2022.
