Our First Virtual Reality Product: Nutrition Counselor VR
- Adrian Aguirre
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Introduction
We’re thrilled to announce the release of Nutrition Counselor VR, our studio’s first virtual reality application! This immersive app was built to enhance clinical nutrition training for students in nutrition and dietetics programs, with a focus on emotional communication, counseling, and clinical procedures. The app meets educational standards and addresses the emotional issues patients may feel while counseling patients.
Grant Objectives
This project started with the vision of Gaby Phillips, MS, RDN, LD, at New Mexico State University. In 2017, she developed a prototype virtual reality (VR) program that allowed students to interact with holographic patients in an immersive environment. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, and supervised practice placements as well as campus facilities were shut down, the VR prototype became an invaluable lifeline, allowing dietetic interns to continue their training despite the closures. Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, PhD, RD, FAND at Rutgers University saw the prototype and sought to expand the program. She drafted additional content and research partners, and brought the project to our team. It was funded by USDA NIFA. Additional grant PIs include:
Devon L. Golem, PhD, RD, LDN University of South Carolina, Arnold School of Public Health
Virginia Quick, PhD, RD, FAND Rutgers University, School of Environmental & Biological Sciences
Pinkin Panchal, MS, RDN Rutgers University, School of Environmental & Biological Sciences
The goal of this project was to expand access to high-quality, standardized supervised experiences, especially for students from rural or underserved backgrounds, and to improve educational outcomes by creating emotionally rich, engaging simulations that reflect the real challenges practitioners face when supporting patients through complex health situations.
Design and Production
Meeting those goals required creativity, innovation, and collaboration across disciplines. A team of artists, programmers, animators, and researchers came together to solve technical problems and bring this one-of-a-kind project to life. What resulted is a set of four patient modules that support ACEND (Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics ) competencies through branching decision-tree scenarios. Each path a student takes leads them to a different reaction from the patient. This encourages critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and reflective practice.
We're particularly proud of our virtual patients. Their characters were carefully designed and animated to communicate emotional nuance. Our lead artist, Anastasia Hames, created a diverse cast using a stylized design to emphasize facial expression while avoiding the “uncanny valley” effect often associated with hyper-realistic models. She also rigged the models for enhanced facial movement, enabling animator Evan Evans to bring life into each performance. All animations were hand-crafted and paired with terrific voice acting to create authentic, believable interactions.
Scripts for each patient scenario were written by Devon L. Golem, PhD, RD, LDN, a skilled dietetics educator and practitioner. Her scripts explore a wide range of clinical and emotional challenges: Dolores navigates glucose management barriers; Craig struggles with physical pain and frustration related to Crohn’s disease; Samuel’s fear becomes a barrier to NG tube placement; and Jhem balances life challenges that affect dietary change. These cases model not just clinical knowledge, but the human empathy required to build trust and calm anxiety in real-world patient interactions.
Our programmer David Abraham led the design of interactivity and user experience, ensuring that each interaction felt intuitive, responsive, and meaningful. David also prioritized accessibility, incorporating features such as hand tracking, subtitles, and alternative controls to make the experience more inclusive and user-friendly for a broad range of learners.
Initial research by the team (and led by Virginia Quick, PhD, RD, FAND) indicates that students found the modules easy to use, and realistic. This is especially meaningful to our development team as we chose not to use photorealistic models in favor of stylized animation to deliver a more emotional impact. Hearing multiple students refer to the program as “real-life” confirms our decision to use voice actors and hand-animated characters, rather than real-time generated audio and lip-syncing.
Conclusion
Nutrition Counselor VR represents a unique, forward-thinking solution for health provider education. The emphasis on emotion enhances the immersive qualities of this simulation. You can find the app on Meta’s App Lab, available for Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3. We’re proud of the work from our team, and excited to see how this application helps shape the future of dietetic training and nutrition counseling education.
This project was part of grant project “iENDEAVORS: Innovative Enhancements of Nutrition and Dietetics Education using Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality to Overcome RDN Shortages,” which was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, through the Higher Education Challenge Grant Program 2021-70003-35433.
Written by Adrian Aguirre, Studio Production Director, Innovative Media Research and Extension
