Kucharski Consulting Get in touch

What Johnson & Johnson's VR Trial Teaches Us About Proof in MedTech Training

One number, 83%, has anchored Johnson & Johnson's VR training story since 2019. Here is what it shows, what it does not, and what pharma and medtech teams can copy.

Radomir Kucharski Founder & CEO, Kucharski Consulting · LinkedIn
5 min read
A surgeon in scrubs, mask and a VR headset reaches toward a glowing holographic hip joint above an empty operating table, while a colleague works at a monitor in the background.

The number

Most VR training pitches start with the technology. The ones that survive a budget review start with a number.

Johnson & Johnson MedTech has one. In October 2019 it reported that Imperial College London had studied VR in surgical education at residency level, using the J&J Institute's training module for the anterior hip approach.[1] The headline: 83% of VR-trained surgeons were able to perform the surgery in a lab setting with minimal guidance, whereas none of the traditionally trained surgeons were able to do the same. J&J added that surgeons who trained at any level in VR outperformed all of the non-VR group, and called the result independent validation of its work.[1]

The number has aged well. The J&J Institute's current customer brochure (© 2025) still leads with it, adds that even the lowest-performing VR-trained surgeon performed better than the best of the non-VR group, and cites the underlying paper:[2] a randomized controlled trial in The Bone & Joint Journal.[3]

Why it works as a business case

Four design choices make the result easy to trust and easy to repeat:

  • One procedure, not "training" in general. The task is a total hip arthroplasty.[3]
  • Blinded, expert assessment. According to the abstract, it was an observer-blinded trial in which each trainee performed a cadaveric hip replacement, assessed independently by two hip surgeons.[3]
  • A control group. Twelve trainees completed a six-week VR programme; twelve received conventional preparatory materials only.[3]
  • An outcome buyers understand. "How much guidance does the trainee still need?" is a question any hospital education lead can read at a glance. With 12 trainees per group, 83% works out to 10 of 12; that is our arithmetic from the published percentages, not a figure quoted from the paper.

What J&J built around the result

A result only matters if it becomes a product. Around this one, the J&J Institute describes resident and fellow programmes, benchmarking that tracks metrics over time, "run-throughs" to keep skills sharp, a growing library of procedure modules, "learn before you go" sessions ahead of professional-education events, and training for the whole OR team.[2] It uses an all-in-one headset small enough to carry to the hospital in a bag,[2] a choice J&J tied in 2019 to the portability of Oculus Quest and to development partner Osso VR.[1]

What the number does not tell you

An honest reading is what makes the case credible.

  • The sample is small. 24 trainees in total, 12 per group.[3]
  • A cadaver lab is not an operating room. The trial measured performance on a cadaver, not outcomes for patients.[3]
  • It measures skill, not patient outcomes. J&J's 2019 announcement frames better outcomes as the ultimate goal of more standardised training, not as a finding of this study.[1]
  • The context is commercial. The brochure says the technology is designed to support appropriate use of company products.[2] That makes it education and marketing at once.
  • Check the funding and disclosures. We have read the abstract, not the full paper. Read the funding and conflict-of-interest statements before you quote the result.
  • Not every headline is equally strong. A review of eight randomized trials in orthopaedic surgical education (2019–2022) described the early evidence as promising.[4] By contrast, one widely reported 230% improvement in a tibial nailing trial was, as TechCrunch noted, financed by the VR vendor itself, and the outlet added that research into VR training efficacy is still early.[5]

Beyond the operating room

Surgery is the easy case for measuring training, because hand movements can be scored. Much of pharma and medtech training aims at things that are harder to score: how a field representative talks about a patient's daily life, whether a nurse recognises early symptoms, whether a caregiver feels heard. The evidence is thinner here, but it exists:

  • Team roles. A randomized trial with 60 nursing students found immersive VR superior to conventional training (a one-hour seminar plus two hours of e-learning) for learning the scrub nurse role in an anterior hip approach.[6]
  • Empathy and understanding. A pre-post evaluation of an immersive digital programme about living with inflammatory bowel disease, delivered to pharmaceutical employees, found significant increases in disease understanding and empathy.[7] It used a pre-post design with an opportunity sample, so it shows change, not cause.

Where the behaviour you want is harder to score, decide how you will measure it before you build anything.

Four lessons for your own pilot

  1. Define one behaviour to change, not a topic to cover. "Understands the disease" is a topic. "Asks about a patient's daily routine in the first minute of the call" is a behaviour.
  2. Decide how you will assess it before you build. Who scores it, with what rubric, and when?
  3. Use a comparison group, even a small one. J&J's result is persuasive because someone trained the other way.
  4. Publish the limits next to the result. A reviewer in medical, legal or compliance will find them anyway; better that they read them from you.

Five questions for any VR training vendor (including us)

  • What exactly was measured, and by whom?
  • Was the assessor blinded to the training group?
  • What was the comparison?
  • Who funded the evidence, and what do the disclosures say?
  • What does the evidence not show?

Planning a VR pilot?

Kucharski Consulting builds white-label VR and AI training for pharma and medtech teams, including patient-perspective simulations. If you are designing a pilot and want to think through what to measure, book 20 minutes with us.

Book a 20-min call Download the capabilities deck

Sources

  1. Johnson & Johnson MedTech, "Advancing Virtual Reality Training for Surgeons," 24 October 2019. jnjmedtech.com
  2. Johnson & Johnson Institute, "Virtual Reality Powers Surgical Training," customer brochure (© 2025). jnjinstitute.com (PDF)
  3. Logishetty K, Rudran B, Cobb JP. "Virtual reality training improves trainee performance in total hip arthroplasty: a randomized controlled trial." The Bone & Joint Journal, 2019. doi.org/10.1302/0301-620X.101B12.BJJ-2019-0643.R1
  4. "Orthopaedic Surgery in the Metaverse: Current Data on Virtual-Reality Based Training" (literature review of eight randomized controlled trials, 2019–2022). ijms.pitt.edu
  5. TechCrunch, "Virtual reality shows new promise for some kinds of surgical training." techcrunch.com
  6. Edwards T, Kablean-Howard F, Poole I, et al. "Immersive virtual reality is superior to conventional training for surgical team members learning anterior approach total hip arthroplasty: a randomized controlled trial." Orthopaedic Proceedings, 2023. doi.org/10.1302/1358-992x.2023.11.037
  7. Halton C, Cartwright T. "Walking in a Patient's Shoes: An Evaluation Study of Immersive Learning Using a Digital Training Intervention." Frontiers in Psychology, 2018. frontiersin.org

Kucharski Consulting has no relationship with Johnson & Johnson. All figures come from the public sources above. We reviewed the abstract of the Bone & Joint Journal paper, not its full text; details on group size and assessment come from that abstract. Published 7 October 2026.