The metaverse is not yet changing the world – but it’s increasingly changing, even saving, lives.
This, as immersive experiences at the intersection of physical and digital are making incremental progress in solving critical, real-world problems within healthcare.
No matter where we may be in the so-called metaverse hype cycle, the sheer scale of opportunity presented by the prospect of a bridge between the virtual and real world, and its accompanying suite of foundational technologies — including artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and real-time advanced connectivity — is difficult to ignore.
Some of the most exciting and revolutionary applications of the metaverse as a bridged-reality platform exist within healthcare. The world, broadly speaking, suffers from a lack of readily available clinically trained and specialized healthcare providers and physicians in many of the areas and geographies that need them most, leading to significant disparities in healthcare delivery.
The issue of reliable access is most pronounced for patients with complex health issues that require specialists, with many patients driving and flying, crossing state and even national borders, to get the specific level of care that they require for their medical conditions.
The metaverse promises to solve for this. It is a big promise, but one that key steps are already being taken toward.
The medical and healthcare industry has long been a pioneer in next generation innovations and technical development. In 1992, the first robotics-assisted surgery took place in the U.S. on a human patient, and that surgical robot, ROBODOC, has since performed over 28,000 orthopedic procedures worldwide.
Surgical technology has advanced to the point where robotic arms and remote surgeries are now common realities rather than science fiction. The metaverse and VR headsets offer a compelling next-step evolution of these hands-free, remotely piloted capabilities.
The premise and promise of the metaverse is that every asset, person and process that takes place in the real world can be replicated virtually, and connected in real time, from anywhere. Meaning that doctors can essentially create digital twins of themselves that can move around and operate within the metaverse’s virtual aether.
Medicine is a global profession, with specialists, academics, and leaders in their field spread across the world in disparate locations. The metaverse offers a compelling way to bring the industry’s greatest minds together in real-time, and place them in virtual environments where their knowledge and experience can have the greatest impact. No international flights needed, and no time wasted.
When properly utilized, the metaverse will allow for multiple physicians in remote locations to virtually interact with each other in such a way that mimics or replicates the experience of collaborating within the same operating room — whether that entails illustrating a surgical technique, showing where to make an incision or something else critical to providing proper patient care.
At its most promising, the metaverse will allow for clinicians to interact across a live procedure, operation, or assessment from start to finish without anyone needing to leave their office — ushering in a whole new era of collaborative medicine and expanding care access to a degree previously unimaginable. That could allow, say, a leading cardiologist in Hamburg to assist and even lead a complex patient procedure taking place in rural North Dakota by leveraging a metaverse-native 3D digital twin of the patient’s body and organs.
It is truly doctors without borders.
Medical training has historically been a high-stakes exercise, with actual bodies and real patients used on an instructional basis for medical students to grow their skillset.
The metaverse and VR headsets allow surgeons to rehearse procedures before entering operation theaters, and they also enable large numbers of medical students to unobtrusively view and witness medical procedures without causing a disturbance.
Simulation-based training and VR/AR exercises in the metaverse provide an accessible, cost-effective, and straightforward way for medical students to gain experience and familiarity with the human body without risking, well, the human body — and medical institutions are embracing the next generation benefits the metaverse offers in training their young physicians.
One metaverse benefit already being realized is the phasing out of using real human cadavers to study anatomy in medical school.
In combination with Microsoft’s HoloLens VR headset, Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine has recently developed virtual cadaver software that fully removes human corpses from its anatomy curriculum, replacing them with digital twin holographic imagery.
Per a Jan. 17 press release announcing the university’s pioneering approach, medical students learned anatomical content twice as fast compared to cadaver dissection, and retained information 44% better when tested eight months later.
Metaverse-based tools and immersive, experiential environments also hold promise for the psychiatric and mental health fields, as they allow for immersive experiences that can supplement cognitive behavior therapy as well as productively assist in the investigation, assessment and management of medical and psychiatric disorders.
As the metaverse builds more bridges between the virtual and physical worlds, new regulations around patient safety, privacy and security will need to be created to buttress the rapid pace of innovation.
Progress and widespread adoption of the metaverse will rely upon just-around-the-corner technical maturity of both hardware and software tools, but the scope of the opportunity, particularly within healthcare, is attractively vast.
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