ENTERPRISE TECH

The Amazing Possibilities Of

Healthcare In The Metaverse

Bernard Marr Contributor

Feb 23, 2022, 02:38am EST New!

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The metaverse is a hot topic at the moment, and much has been written and spoken about
its potential to revolutionize gaming, entertainment, socializing, work and commerce.
Not so much has been said, however, about how it could affect healthcare – but this is
another field where its impact could be transformational.

The Amazing Possibilities Of Healthcare In The Metaverse ADOBE STOCK

Firstly – for those who are still understandably confused – what is the metaverse? Well,
the reason there’s a fair amount of confusion is that no one is quite sure at the moment,
as it’s somewhat up in the air. What’s generally agreed on, however, is that it’s effectively
the next version of the internet – one that will take advantage of artificial intelligence
(AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and ever-increasing connectivity (for
example, 5G networks) to create online environments that are more immersive,
experiential and interactive than what we have today.

Metaverse involves the convergence of three major technological trends, which all have
the potential to impact healthcare individually. Together, though, they could create
entirely new channels for delivering care that have the potential to lower costs and vastly
improve patient outcomes. These are telepresence (allowing people to be together
virtually, even while we’re apart physically), digital twinning, and blockchain (and its
ability to let us create a distributed internet). Let’s take a look at each one of them in turn:
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Telepresence

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 had the ability to provide remote treatment to patients. Today
that figure stands at 95%. For routine consultations that don’t require a physical
 examination (or which can be carried out visually), doctors and nurses have found that
they are able to more quickly and efficiently diagnose many of the minor conditions that
make up the vast majority of their caseload via a telephone or video call. This will
undoubtedly persist in the metaverse. However, virtual reality – a key technology that
enables the next-level immersion that partly qualifies a platform or application as part of
the metaverse – 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, particularly through VR, mean patients are no longer limited
to being treated by particular clinicians due to their physical location. If you’re in Europe
and the best specialist to deal with your particular condition happens to be in India, you
can effectively be in the same room simply by putting on headsets. Scans and tests can be
carried out at a facility local to you, and the data transferred to the specialist, wherever
they are in the world. It’s particularly useful in areas like China where there is an acute
shortage of medical professionals, as well as for patients in remote regions who would
ordinarily have to travel great distances to be seen by healthcare professionals.

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Another area where it can be particularly beneficial is therapy. Environments can be

personalized to individual patients – VR is already used by psychologists and
psychiatrists in aversion therapy, where patients can interact with situations that cause
them anxiety, in safe environments where every aspect of the interaction can be closely
monitored and controlled.

Digital Twins

A digital twin is a virtual model, or simulation, of any object, process, or system,

generated using real-world data, for the purpose of learning more about its real-world
counterpart. In the case of the metaverse, the digital twin could be of the patient
themself.

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 Jack Latus, CEO of Latus Health – an online healthcare provider specializing in
occupational health – believes that digital twins will eventually become “test dummies”
for individuals that can be used to predict everything from how we will recover from
surgery to the reactions we will have to specific medicines. This will come about through
our increasing ability to map and understand individual genetics. During a recent
conversation, he told me, "We'll be able to fast-forward – so if we age this twin by ten
years, based on these interventions we're doing – how does this affect the twin?

“You start to almost be able to see into the future … we'll see that this is the outcome
we're going to get if we follow this protocol for the next ten years."

Blockchain Technology

Known to most as the technology which underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin,

blockchains are actually just distributed and encrypted databases that allow data to be
stored and transferred securely in a way that no one except the data owner can tamper
with. Many people consider them to be an important part of the metaverse concept
because they allow for decentralized communities governed democratically via smart
contracts, as well as a record of digital “ownership” of environments or even objects in the
digital domain.

In healthcare, their most obvious use case is in the management and security of our
highly valuable health data. At the moment, data is often shared between multiple
organizations 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 centralized servers
means that our data is at risk of being stolen (the resale value of a single health record is
said to be between $70 and $100 on the dark web). It also means that getting at it, even
for those who have a legitimate need to access it – for example, a specialist who is
treating us - is often a lengthy and laborious process.

As Latus puts it, “It’s clunky … you write to your GP, saying please can I have access to my
records, then you have to sign a form, and you might get the records in 28 days, then you
have to send them on … with the technology that’s available today that’s just ridiculous …
it would be much more sensible for everyone to own their own records on a personal file
on a blockchain. It’s unhackable … and with a click of a button, you can give consent to
any clinician anywhere in the world to review your records."

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 and packages, unhindered by the siloed nature of much of the existing
healthcare system. Swift information sharing between clinicians would mean that
underlying causes of ill health could more quickly be established. Monitoring of patient
activity in the metaverse means factors such as compliance could more easily be tracked,
which would further assist with diagnosing and treating illness. Latus raises the example
of a patient being treated by a physiotherapist for an injured knee.
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"It looks like a purely physical issue, but if it isn't getting any better, you have to look at
the mental effects – why isn't it getting better?"

It may turn out that due to depression the patient isn’t completing their rehabilitative
exercises, and therefore, the physical injury isn’t going to heal. Offering treatment in a
 joined-up manner within virtual environments, with a new approach to data sharing,
should make treatment of this sort quicker and more effective.

Virtual Hospitals

Another part of his vision that Latus shared for the future of healthcare is around the
concept of the “virtual hospital”. This is a project that Latus Healthcare is currently
developing and could become available as a service within 12 to 18 months. Essentially it
comprises of a virtual reality hospital environment, accessed through a headset, where
treatments will at first be focused around counseling and physiotherapy services.
Physiotherapy will make use of computer vision – for example, using cameras to
investigate the range of motion in damaged joints, as well as the progress that patients
are making towards recovery. Latus says, "With VR and AR, we're able to give them much
better feedback on their process … for example someone with a shoulder joint issue, if
that shoulder range of motion improves by three percent, as an individual, you probably
wouldn't feel that.

“But if you can get it reported back to you, you will actually see it working, and get a plan
… if you improve at this rate, you can get back to normal in a certain number of weeks.
From a motivation or compliance point of view … that’s going to have a massive effect.
You have genuine data to back up the work you’ve been putting in.”

It’s clear that many aspects of healthcare delivery will be affected by the opportunities
offered by the metaverse. There may be some hurdles to be overcome first, particularly
around people’s attitudes to receiving treatment online or remotely – which may still be
seen as a second-best or backup option by many. There are also questions around
equality of access – VR headsets are not cheap, and if they are required in order to take
part, it could be seen as further contributing towards inequality in access to healthcare.
But these are issues that are likely to be addressed given time if the new generation of
digital-first healthcare providers can successfully show that their innovation will lead to
reduced cost and improved outcomes for patients.

You can watch my webinar with Jack Latus, CEO of Latus Health, here:

To stay on top of these and other trends, sign up for my newsletter, and check out my
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books 'Tech Trends in Practice' and 'Business Trends in Practice.'

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work here. 

Bernard Marr
 Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a...
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