This metaverse According to a recent study, the Internet domain, where users are immersed in an interactive digital environment, has great potential to disrupt traditional healthcare services in the long run. Report from Accenture.
For this report, Accenture surveyed 391 healthcare executives in 10 countries. Over 80% said they believe the Metaverse will have a positive impact on the healthcare industry.
According to Kaveh Safavi, senior managing director at Accenture Health, Metaverse has two main functions. The first is the “Internet of Places,” which refers to spaces in virtual worlds that can virtually teleport users to almost any world they can imagine. This could one day allow people to easily interact with clinicians, peers and businesses from a distance, Safavi said.
The second is Web3 or the “Internet of Ownership”. Web3 is an evolving term used in this report to describe the use of technologies such as blockchain and tokenization to build a more distributed data layer within the Internet, allowing Metaverse users to own and verify data. Healthcare organizations can move some of their operations to Metaverse and maintain their own internal virtual environments, Safavi said. This will allow employees to work from anywhere and collaborate based on data they can verify.
“The greatest value in healthcare will depend on how the ‘Internet of Local’ and the ‘Internet of Ownership’ converge with each other,” Safawi said. “Combined, the two have the power to remove the mistrust, friction and division that patients and caregivers experience across platforms, care settings and work environments.”
Safavi doesn’t know when the future he’s describing will become a reality, but he says there are practical ways to foresee vendor adoption of the Metaverse. For example, if doctors notice that one of their patients is slow to recover from basic laparoscopic surgery, they can turn their attention to the virtual world and watch that patient’s previous abdominal surgery. Doctors can then show patients videos explaining that their slow healing times are the result of scar tissue that formed during previous surgeries.
Patients can continue to heal in the virtual world after they are discharged from the hospital. For example, their physical therapists can demonstrate exercises in immersive environments, such as those simulating a beach, and they can fast-forward into the future to show patients how they will move in six weeks.
If a healthcare company or healthcare system wants to enter the metaverse, Safavi says they must ensure they have the underlying social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies to build a complete interactive digital healthcare ecosystem. He also noted that they must have the right data.
“It’s not just about EMR data,” he said. “It’s data that represents the full spectrum of people, objects and activities. Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations are unable to capture data about people and processes.”
Safavi admits that the exciting healthcare metaverse applications detailed in the report are unlikely to appear anytime soon, compared to February’s rock healthy Report Said the same. It shows that while Metaverse’s integration with healthcare will take time, healthcare leaders are fighting a protracted battle and are starting to invest in Metaverse technologies — investors pouring into U.S. startups using virtual or augmented reality healthcare in 2021 $198 million, up from $93 million in 2021. 2020.
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