Special guest blog by Malik Usman of CitrusBits
This week on the AgeTech Collaborative™ blog, we are pleased to welcome a guest post by Malik Usman, head of business development and partnerships at CitrusBits, an AgeTech Collaborative enterprise participant that delivers end-to-end solutions spanning custom medical device engineering through robust software development.
In this post, Malik offers his perspective on the substantive (and sometimes hidden) tradeoffs when companies use extended reality (XR) — which can encompass devices that use virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality — to test, develop and deploy their AgeTech solutions. Let’s dive in!
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The promise of AgeTech lies in its ability to help older adults live with greater independence, dignity and quality of life. Extended reality is increasingly part of that promise, enabling new approaches to mobility training, cognitive assessment, vision diagnostics and rehabilitation.
Over the past few years, many AgeTech teams have turned to XR headsets as a way to prototype quickly and validate new clinical ideas. In the early stages, this choice often makes sense. Consumer XR hardware is accessible, relatively affordable, and supported by a large developer ecosystem. For experimentation, usability testing and early proof-of-concept work, these platforms can lower the barrier to entry.
However, as solutions move from prototype to regulated medical device and from pilots to scaled clinical deployment, the tradeoffs of consumer XR hardware become more pronounced. What initially appears to be a cost-effective choice can introduce long-term operational, regulatory and financial challenges that are difficult to unwind later.
In this article, I explore three areas where these challenges most often emerge: total cost of ownership, regulatory validation and long-term business value.
1. Total Cost of Ownership: Looking Beyond the Sticker Price
For early-stage teams, hardware cost is often evaluated by unit price alone. Consumer XR headsets typically win this comparison over purpose-specific, enterprise-grade technologies. Over time, however, the total cost of ownership (TCO) tells a different story.
Operational Overhead
Consumer XR devices are designed for individual users, not shared clinical environments. As deployments grow, teams often encounter hidden operational costs:
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Device management: Many consumer headsets lack enterprise-grade device management, requiring manual configuration, updates and troubleshooting. What works for a handful of devices can become labor-intensive at scale.
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Security considerations: Clinical environments require strong controls around data access, network security and patient privacy. Consumer operating systems are not always designed with healthcare workflows or compliance frameworks in mind, increasing monitoring and support burdens.
Durability and Hygiene
Clinical use places very different demands on hardware than home or entertainment use:
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Cleaning and infection control: Consumer foam interfaces and fabrics are often difficult to disinfect consistently and may degrade quickly under medical-grade cleaning protocols.
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Wear and tear: Devices used daily by multiple users tend to experience higher failure rates, driving replacement and support costs that are rarely accounted for up front.
Supply Chain Uncertainty
Consumer hardware lifecycles are driven by market trends, not clinical timelines. Models may be revised or discontinued with little notice, creating challenges for long-term procurement, standardization and support once a device is embedded in a care workflow.
2. Regulatory Validation: The Cost of Hardware Volatility
In regulated healthcare products, consistency matters. Changes to hardware components can ripple through clinical validation and regulatory submissions.
Clinical Revalidation Risk
Many XR-based diagnostic and therapeutic solutions rely on precise optical or sensor characteristics, such as display properties or eye-tracking accuracy. When underlying hardware changes:
These efforts can be time-consuming and expensive, especially if they were not planned for in the original roadmap.
Documentation and Control
Regulatory pathways such as FDA 510(k) submissions require clear documentation of system components and configurations. Consumer hardware vendors typically do not guarantee long-term stability of components or provide the level of documentation expected in regulated medical environments. This can introduce uncertainty into submissions and ongoing compliance efforts.
Opportunity Cost
Time and resources spent adapting to hardware changes are time and resources not spent on improving clinical outcomes, expanding access or refining the user experience. For small teams, this opportunity cost can be significant.
3. Long-Term Business Value and Investor Perspective
Hardware strategy is increasingly part of investor and partner due diligence in digital health and AgeTech.
Risk and Predictability
Investors and acquirers tend to favor solutions with predictable deployment, maintenance and revenue models. Dependence on rapidly evolving consumer hardware can be perceived as a source of technical and operational risk.
Defensibility and Differentiation
Solutions that combine validated software with stable, healthcare-appropriate hardware often present stronger differentiation. While hardware adds complexity and can create barriers to entry, it can also reinforce long-term value when aligned with clinical and regulatory requirements.
Reimbursement and Scaling Confidence
As teams explore reimbursement pathways and broader adoption, consistency and reliability become critical. Platforms that support long-term availability and controlled specifications can make it easier to plan for scaling and integration into established care systems.
Conclusion: A Pragmatic Transition, Not a Binary Choice
Consumer XR platforms have played, and will continue to play, an important role in early innovation across AgeTech. They enable rapid learning, experimentation and iteration.
The challenge arises when teams attempt to scale clinical solutions on foundations that were never designed for regulated, multi-patient, long-term use. At that stage, the apparent cost savings of consumer hardware can be offset by operational complexity, regulatory risk and uncertainty around long-term availability.
Rather than viewing this as an either-or decision, many successful teams adopt a phased approach: leveraging consumer devices during early exploration, then transitioning to more controlled, healthcare-specific platforms as clinical evidence, regulatory requirements and commercial plans solidify.
As XR becomes more deeply integrated into senior care diagnostics and therapeutics, these platform decisions increasingly shape not just technical outcomes, but the sustainability and resilience of AgeTech businesses themselves.
If you're interested in learning more about CitrusBits and the many ways it can help companies define digital strategies, create user-centered products, and develop secure, scalable platforms, visit the company’s website.
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