• The healthcare technology industry is constantly evolving due to innovations in the medical space.
• The healthcare sector is seeing a massive digital transformation from MRI scans and X-rays to robotic surgeries and virtual reality.
• The announcement of an emerging technology — the Metaverse by the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zukerberg — triggered its potential usage in the healthcare sector.
• Just like the advent of telemedicine and mobile device integration in the past.
• The metaverse stands to be a massive technological game-changer for healthcare in 2022.
• Metaverse is a promising technology and holds lucrative opportunities in the medical field.
• This can address specific issues such as mental health, access to health without geographical limitations, virtual wellness and fitness, and connecting with people.
• As a combination of leveraging virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology operates in virtual spaces.

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The Metaverse’s potential Amaze

• The metaverse’s potential is staggering: Improved surgical precision, therapeutic usages, and social-distancing accommodations.
• All signs point to widespread adoption of the metaverse as a disruptive transformation in healthcare.
• Nevertheless, with these improvements also comes distinct challenges that will redefine modern healthcare as we know it.
• From achieving seamless integration across existing medical infrastructure, offsetting startup costs, and data security/privacy issues.
• The metaverse represents a paradigm shift in healthcare that stakeholders must be aware of.

What is the Metaverse?

• Developed for years, the gaming industry and organisations like Facebook (now Meta).
• The metaverse is AR/VR interface in that users immersed in visual, auditory, and haptic sensors that meet another user within a virtually-augmented world. 
• The Metaverse can augment Web 3 standards like blockchain to facilitate ownership, online payments, traceability, etc.
• Users perform virtual activities in the Metaverse that provide authentic experiences and results in the real world.
• Leading to several applications redefining how we communicate (in much the same way that the Internet and smartphones have).
• At first glance, Meta’s idea of a Metaverse seems to the technology geared towards gaming and entertainment.
• The widespread adoption of AR/VR tech in industries such as architecture, manufacturing, and supercomputing has proved it a viable technology for healthcare demands.

Evolving the Metaverse

• As the metaverse continues to evolve and widely adopted in healthcare settings, expect this technology to provide new directions to healthcare that encompasses:
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Virtual Reality (VR)
  • Augmented Reality (AR)
  • Extended Reality (XR)
  • Internet of Medical Devices
  • Web 3.0
  • Intelligent cloud
  • Edge computing
  • Robotics

Potentials of Metaverse in Healthcare

1. Virtual Reality’s Growing Role in Medical Training

• The Metaverse’s user-immersion aspects are a perfect vehicle to train medical staff.
• Here are a few directions the Metaverse is heading for medical training:
  • Simulation training, such as
  • trainees getting up -a close view  surgeon’s procedure enhanced the tactile, haptic controls
  • Exams can be verified from video recordings of practice procedures
  • Interactive training modules enhance learning key concepts where, for example, VR can take a learner within the human body and provide a 360° view of a patient’s ailment.

1. 2. Digital Therapeutic Applications of The Metaverse

• The Metaverse is already showing signs of new opportunities in therapeutic applications.
• Digital therapeutics are rapidly adopting this form of therapy, where VR and AR tech in the metaverse enable applications such as cognitive therapy.
• Support groups, psychiatric evaluations, rehabilitation, and – with the support of haptic sensors, even physical therapy.
• Known in healthcare as telemedicine, the provision of medicine as a remote service.
• This experienced a surge in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Before 2020, just 43% of healthcare facilities could provide remote treatment to patients.
• Today, that figure stands at 95%.
• For routine consultations that require a physical examination (or which can be carried out visually).

Information found

• Doctors and nurses have found that they can more quickly and efficiently diagnose many minor conditions that make up most of their caseload via a telephone or video call.
• This will undoubtedly persist in the metaverse.
• However, virtual reality – is a critical technology that enables the next-level immersion that partly qualifies a platform or application as part of the metaverse.
• It opens a whole new range of possibilities.
• Anyone who has tried it will know that headset-based VR experiences convey a far greater sense of “being there” than other virtual environments, such as websites, messaging apps, or social media. 

Telemedicine consultations for Metaverse 

• Telemedicine consultations, mainly through VR, mean patients are no longer limited to treatment by particular clinicians due to their physical location.
• If you’re in Europe and the best specialist to deal with your particular condition in India, you can put on headsets effectively in the same room.
• Scans and tests carried out at a facility local to you, and the data transferred to the specialist, wherever they are in the world.
• It’s beneficial in areas like China, where there is an acute shortage of medical professionals and patients in remote regions who would ordinarily travel great distances to see healthcare professionals.

1. 3. Augmented Reality in Surgical Procedures

• With surgical procedures already using advanced tech like robotics, the Metaverse is expected to be an effective tool to help perform complicated surgical procedures and enhance patient care.
• In nearly every facet of surgery, the Metaverse has already generated plenty of hype and projections about its capabilities:
  • Surgeons meet in a virtual operating theatre and collaborate in surgery with assistance from other consultants and specialists
  • Surgeons will have a display a patient’s body vital signs, images, medical history, and different types of relevant patient data
  • New integrated technology with the Metaverse can perform provide rapid test results in real-time for better patient outcomes
• Obviously, adoption will be slow initially.
• Clinical trials must be performed to ultimately evaluate the Metaverse as a practical part of the surgery.
• As with integrating robot-assisted surgery, expect the Metaverse to become more and more top-of-mind as it grows in usage.

1. 4. Blockchain Technology

• Known to most as the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
• Blockchains are distributed and encrypted databases.
• It allows data stored and transferred securely so that no one except the data owner can tamper with it.
• Furthermore, many people consider them an essential part of the metaverse concept.
• They allow for decentralised communities governed democratically via smart contracts and a record of digital “ownership” of environments or even objects in the digital domain.
• In healthcare, their most obvious use case is managing and securing our precious health data.

Data is often shared between multiple organisations.

• At the moment, in a way that’s both inefficient and opaque as far as the owners of that data (us) are concerned.
• The fact that health records are usually stored on centralised servers means that our data is at risk of being stolen.
• It also means that getting at it, even for those who have a legitimate need to access it – for example, a specialist treating us – is often a lengthy and laborious process.
• It would be much more sensible for everyone to own their records on a personal file on a blockchain.
• It’s un-hackable, and with a click of a button, you can give consent to any clinician anywhere in the world to review your records.

1. 5. Convergence

• The convergence of these core technologies in online environments – the metaverse
• Means healthcare professionals will be able to deliver more joined-up treatment programs.
• Packages unhindered by the siloed nature of much of the existing healthcare system.
• Additionally, swift information sharing between clinicians.
• It means that underlying causes of ill health could more quickly get established.
• Monitoring patient activity in metaverse means more easily tracking factors such as compliance.
• Which would further assist in diagnosing and treating illness.

1. 6. How Radiology Can Benefit From The Metaverse

• Radiology imaging is one department in healthcare that will benefit from the metaverse’s immersive visual capabilities, unleashing new powers in radiology, including:
  • More excellent image visualisation and manipulation
  • View dynamic images with more details for a better diagnosis of disease/injury
  • Facilitates close collaboration between physicians on medical images in a 3D format

1. 7. Using Medical Wearables In The Metaverse

• Metaverse will empower the usage of medical wearables for patients and physicians.
• Devices, such as COPD monitors, can alert emergency staff and caregivers to provide wellness checks if a patient has a COPD flare-up.
• Wearables are also projected to equip physicians with better data, enhancing virtual appointments in the Metaverse with real-time and collected data.

Three areas in which the Metaverse will likely dominate

1. 1. Surgical operations

• Currently, surgeons use AR, VR, AI, and minimally invasive surgeries to augment patient outcomes.
• Leading hospitals and universities use these technologies for surgeries because they give a 3-D view of a patient’s body and help interpret, plan, and perform them.
• VR and AR simulation is used for surgical training and is widely used for efficient, safe, and measurable medical training.
• However, VR or AR comes with unique technical challenges in healthcare.
• These obstacles include creating realistic physical objects and surgical interfaces within a computer-generated space.

VR systems

• Representing interactions between items and processing signals for complicated events during surgeries.
• Furthermore, mobile VRs offer pocket size immersion because VR systems are limited to specific clinical settings. Resolution of devices and computer specifications are limiting aspects for medical facilities.
• These challenges can overcome with the intervention of the metaverse in the healthcare sector.
• As it offers space and realistic interaction between doctor-patient, including objects.
• Thus, it is easier to explain surgical operations to patients and complications.

1. 2. Mental health

• The metaverse raises interesting concerns regarding mental health, such as the following:
  • Addiction to virtual realities
  • Harming people suffering from mental disorders such as psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, or anxiety
  • Revolutionising mental health treatment altogether

Metaverse in mental health

• Can be used to treat various brain issues such as phobias, PTSD, anxiety disorders, hallucinations, and delusions.
• Technology has changed the way we seek support from friends, family, colleagues, or healthcare professionals during a mental breakdown.
• Companies working in the virtual reality space are devising mental wellness applications for metaverse as this technology holds potential benefits for our wellbeing.
• Metaverse has an interactive nature and provides an arena for online therapy, improves access to treatment for disabled people, and renders a life-like experience.
• Usage of psychotherapy formats in the metaverse can help individuals with phobias, stress, addiction, eating disorders, psychosis, etc.

1. 3. Medical education and training

• Metaverse application in medical education and training would produce an augmented reality space to examine the anatomy of a human body in a laboratory setting.
• This technology holds potential opportunities for creating a new educational environment.
• Additionally, this new environment offers space for communication, provisions for new experiences, freedom to share and create, and high immersion.
• Challenges suggested are privacy impingement, maladaptation to the students in the real world, and commission of crimes.

 VR used for

• VR being used to train doctors and medical providers by stimulating accurate procedures and displaying cellular level data on the human anatomy.
• Currently, AR has made its way into the medical school curriculum and has shown a positive outcome for medicine.
• Likewise, a combination of these two technologies in the form of metaverse will augment general medical education in the coming years.
• Medical teachers can use this technology to help students solve problems, perform projects, build creativity, and create a learning space for all students.
•  No doubt, the metaverse is the next big thing in the medical field, but it will take another decade before being used actively in hospitals or medical practices.

Challenges Of The Metaverse In Healthcare And Patient Care

1. 1. Attracting an Audience for the Metaverse

• How will Meta and other tech companies attract people to the metaverse? For any new technology, gaining market traction is up to its users.
• This raises many questions about trust and usability of the metaverse.
• For example, would the elderly and less-tech-savvy enter the metaverse and get the best care? Or, would metaverse appointments be perceived as just as valuable as in-person visits?

1. 2. Privacy & Security in Metaverse

• Another challenge is the security of patient data in the metaverse.
• As the world becomes more dependent on technology, more concern must give to the privacy of people and the solutions provided by cyber security companies.
• Healthcare is one of the biggest industries that suffer from data security breaches.
• And the price of this data is considered one of the pricey data in the world.
• A lot of patients have become more aware of the privacy and security of their healthcare data, and they have more concerns and consider it a kind of sensitive data.
• Developers and technology companies in the metaverse should consider how to keep healthcare data private and secured to make people more likely to adopt this kind of technology.

1. 3. High Cost of Technology

• To enable the full potential in healthcare, it will require high-tech hardware like glasses, gloves, sensors, and other wearables that can read patients’ vital signs.
• The hardware cost is still not cheap.
• The whole society cannot afford it.
• This technology limited to those who can afford it.
• In addition to that, these devices will constantly evolve and modernise.
• Therefore, taking advantage of the new capabilities will also require purchasing new equipment with the development.
•  Smartphones updated more than once a year.
• Also, the infrastructure cost for healthcare providers not expected to be cheap.
• It requires high-end connectivity like 5G when it comes to surgery.

1. 4. Interoperability

• Interoperability is a critical component of today’s healthcare paradigm.
• one of the most challenging when it comes to emerging technologies.
• Additionally, adding another element like the metaverse can have drastic and unpredictable effects on which devices are easy to port among different platforms.
• Moreover, unless the entire healthcare industry quickly evolves data and communication standards.
• Besides, by adopting the metaverse will be slow and may even lead to some negative results.
• Metaverse can solve this interoperability issue.
• Finally, it will be able to connect all technologies and unify the healthcare data and Patient history to become accessible anytime, anywhere.

Conclusion

• Finally, the healthcare technology industry is constantly evolving due to innovations in the medical space.
• After the metaverse is a promising technology and holds lucrative opportunities in the medical field.
• In addition, this can address specific issues such as mental health, access to health without geographical limitations, virtual wellness and fitness, and just connecting with people.