The XR Association (XRA) and the Center for Medical Innovations in Extended Reality (MIXR) held the second workshop in the XRx Healthcare Summit series on September 23, 2026, at the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC) offices in North Bethesda, Md.
The summit is a working forum that convenes leading health-system leaders, clinicians, payers, patients, technologists and policymakers to identify concrete pathways for scaling extended reality (XR) in care delivery, workforce training and health system operations. The summit’s broader goal is to address two questions: Why hasn’t XR scaled more rapidly in health care? What can be done to correct this missed opportunity?
Last month’s workshop focused on XR’s impact on patient care and on scaling XR in healthcare. Presentations and conversations explored obstacles to scaling immersive technologies broadly in hospital and healthcare settings and examined where XR is already creating patient value. Further discussions focused on the patient experience, adoption, trust, accessibility, safety and implementation.
“XR has shown it can improve patient care, but what’s missing is a shared appreciation of its value across the entire healthcare ecosystem,” said MIXR principal investigator Amitabh Varshney, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland. “This workshop brought together healthcare providers, computer scientists, patients and payers to understand the next steps needed to facilitate adoption of XR by health systems at scale.”
The workshop underscored that XR healthcare adoption is not primarily a hardware problem. Scaling depends on demonstrating value in terms that health systems, payers, clinicians, patients and information technology departments recognize. Such metrics include improved outcomes, lower costs, better access, reduced burden, safer care and stronger patient experience.
The strongest opportunities appear where XR supports broader care goals rather than serving 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 also supported moving beyond one-off pilots toward shared evidence, implementation standards and coordinated industry action.
The workshop results, along with those from the clinician-focused workshop held at the UM-IHC in April 2026, will be synthesized into an XRx Healthcare Report that will include a practical set of collective initiatives and recommendations.
“These meetings brought together scientists and practitioners to understand and break down the barriers to practical use. This is critical to eventual success,” said UM-IHC Co-Executive Director Adam Porter, a professor of computer science at UMD.
Contacts:
Barbara Brawn, UM-IHC’s director of Strategic Initiatives, bbrawn@umd.edu
Stephanie Montgomery, XRA’s senior vice president of Research and Best Practices, smontgomery@xra.org
