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.
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. 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. 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.
The 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. It says, "With VR and AR, we're able to give them much better feedback on their process".
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.
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