Virtual humans in healthcare

Virtual reality (VR) technology is creating a revolutionary trend in the field of healthcare. VR in the past was used specifically for surgery planning, training. It has now evolved from visualizing complex data in a medical surgical process to a communication interface for neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation. VR, which was once considered as integration of hardware, is moving at a fast pace, it is enabling patients to immerse in a real time 3D virtual environments (VEs) with their own natural senses via an advanced human computer interface. Recent innovations include virtual humans (VHs) inhabiting different VEs for the purposes of enhancing healthcare. We cover State of the Art of VHs focusing on healthcare applications, and we propose VH architecture to improve VHs by providing the user with a more "realistic" experience. The efficacy of a VEs and VHs depends on the level of physical structure modeling, controlling, and interaction of the user within the simulated 3D environment and the level must be chosen by the characteristic of the application.