XR has come a long way, baby – and we have one of the technology's earliest pioneer's on today's episode. Dr. Walter Greenleaf has been working in the field for 33 years, since the days when VR was little more than a twinkle in research scientists' eyes. Now, he and Alan chat about how far the technology has come, and how far it still has to go.

Alan: Welcome to the XR for

Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is Dr.

Walter Greenleaf, a behavioral neuroscientist and medical technology

developer working at Stanford University. With over three decades of

research and development experience in the field of digital medicine

and medical virtual reality technology, Walter is considered the

leading authority in the field of working in this industry, and he's

been doing this for 33 years. Unbelievable experience. Dr. Greenleaf

has designed and developed numerous clinical systems over the last 33

years, including products in the fields of surgical simulation, 3D

medical visualization, telerehabilitation, clinical informatics,

clinical decision support, point of care, clinical data collection,

ergonomic evaluation technology, automatic sleep staging systems,

psycho-physiological assessment and simulation assisted

rehabilitation technologies, as well as products for behavioral

medicine. Dr. Greenleaf's focus has always been on computer supported

clinical products, with a specific focus on virtual reality and

digital health technologies to treat post-traumatic stress disorder,

anxiety disorders, traumatic brain injury, stroke, addictions, autism

and other difficult problems, and behavioral and physical medicine.

He's currently a distinguished visiting scholar at Stanford

University's Media X program at Stanford University's Virtual Human

Interaction Lab and the Director of Technology Strategy at the

University of Colorado National Mental Health Institute Center. To

learn more about the work that Dr. Greenleaf and his team are doing,

you can visit the Human Interaction Lab at Stanford at

vhil.stanford.edu and a new

organization that he's formed called the International VR Health

Association at ivrha.org.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Walter

Greenleaf. So great to have you.

Walter: Thanks, Alan. I'm

pleased to be here with you.

Alan: That's an honor. You are

considered one of the godfathers of this technology. You've been

working in it your whole life. And I want to personally say thank you

for laying the groundwork that allows people like myself -- the new

people getting involved here -- to really pick up where you left off,

and where you've driven this whole industry forward to, and let us

really build upon your lifetimes of knowledge. So thank you very much

for paving the way for us.

Walter: Well, thank you, Alan.

And really, without everybody else's and my colleagues work and your

work and other people who are helping the trends position from

something that for a long time was a research lab curiosity and

something that really hadn't escaped the confines of academia. Now we

have it out there in the world. And I'm particularly excited about

all the progress has been made in applying VR and AR technology to

difficult problems in healthcare. For me, it's a very exciting time.

Alan: I've been keeping track of

all of the different things that come up in my news feed and I have a

health and medical folder. And it's interesting, because last year I

actually had to break it apart into a mental health folder, in

addition to the traditional health and medical. So there is an

enormous amount of, not just research, but real practical

applications being created for this. You know, one of them, one that

stands out the most to me is being able to use virtual reality to

treat lazy eye or strabismus.