The potential for virtual reality entertainment is one of the first things our friends in Hollywood bring up these days, especially since the first Oculus Rift headset went on sale two weeks ago. Goldman Sachs predicts the market for VR will be bigger than TV in the next 10 years, generating $125 billion in revenues by 2025.

But the truly life-altering impact of VR likely won’t be in media or gaming, but health care. Here’s how the tech is already helping to improve treatment for patients.

Virtual Surgery

VR is now being used to simulate medical situations ranging from brain surgery to CPR. By creating immersive experiences for students, instructors can dramatically increase information retention. One study within the Miami Children’s Health System showed that students trained using VR retained 80% of the information they learned, while those trained in a traditional setting retained a mere 20%.

Imagine if surgeons could rehearse on a virtual patient before physically cutting into them. Integrated VR programs that allow a doctor to ask “What will happen if I do this?” and then display an accurate simulation of the outcome may not be far off.

Amputees

More than half of amputees experience pain in the amputated part of the body that is no longer there. For instance, a patient who has lost a hand might have a sensation of that hand being painfully clenched up, with no way to release that feeling.

VR may offer an effective treatment for phantom limb pain. At Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, doctors placed electrodes on the stump of a patient’s limb to pick up signals meant for the amputated area. The VR headset then converted these signals into a visual that simulated what the patient would otherwise control the limb to do, such as using their arm to drive a car. The patient involved in this study not only had less pain, but experienced prolonged pain-free periods during treatment.

Burn Victims

The idea of distracting someone to take their mind off of their pain isn’t new. But by allowing users to feel as though they are “present” in another world, VR achieves a level of distraction well beyond ordinary video games. SnowWorld, developed by cognitive psychologist Hunter Hoffman, places burn patients in a virtual world of snow and ice. For patients who used the game, the amount of time they spent thinking about pain dropped from 76% to 22%. The next step, Hoffman predicts, will be creating customized worlds that allow patients to tap into their happiest memories and experience them all over again.

Mental Health

VR has already been widely used for exposure therapy to alleviate phobias. One application has seen patients overcome their crippling fear of flying by gradually being exposed to virtual flight simulations.

For those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, using VR to prompt eye movement desensitization and reprocessing holds promise. This process has patients follow a moving object with their eyes while recalling the traumatic memory, combining memory recall and eye movement to tax the brain and make these memories less clear and vivid.

VR games like Deep are a form of biofeedback, using a person’s breath to steer the virtual environment. This teaches the user to master yogic breathing techniques that can relieve stress, anxiety and mild depression.

So while VR will do much to amplify our gaming and entertainment experiences, it’s most important role may come in amplifying our well being.