The Incredible Possibilities of Healthcare in The Metaverse

The metaverse is a popular topic right now, and a lot has been written and spoken about how it might transform work, play, social interaction, and business. Healthcare is another industry where its impact could be revolutionary, but it hasn’t been discussed as much as other industries.

What is the metaverse, to start with, for those who are still understandably perplexed? The fact that everyone is uncertain at the time because it’s uncertain is the reason there is a decent degree of confusion. The consensus is that it is, in fact, the next generation of the internet, one that will use augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and ever-increasing connectivity (for instance, 5G connections) to develop interactive environments that are more immersive, interactive, and experiential than those we currently have.

In the metaverse, three important technical developments that have the potential to have an independent impact on healthcare are converging. But if they collaborate, they might come up with entirely new approaches to providing care that would cut costs and greatly improve patient outcomes. Blockchain, digital twinning, and telepresence are some of the technologies that enable people to virtually be together even when they are physically apart. Let's dive into some of these technologies.

Possibilities of Healthcare in the Metaverse

Telepresence

Telemedicine, or the practice of providing medical care remotely, is a term used in the healthcare industry. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, this saw a rise in popularity. Prior to 2020, just 43 percent of healthcare organizations could treat patients remotely. Presently, 95 percent of that is true. Nurses and doctors have discovered that they are capable of diagnosing several of the minor ailments that comprise the overwhelming bulk of their caseload more efficiently and quickly through a video or telephone call for a routine consultation process that doesn’t demand a physical examination (or that can be carried out visually). There's little doubt that this will continue in the metaverse. Virtual reality, a crucial advancement that permits the next-level immersion that partially qualifies a platform or application as a component of the metaverse, however, offers up a completely new world of opportunities. Everyone who has used it will agree that, compared to other virtual environments, such as webpages, messaging applications, or social media, headset-based VR experiences give users a much stronger sense of "being there."

Blockchain Technology

Blockchains, which are most commonly associated with the tech that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, are simply distributed, encrypted databases that make it possible to store and move data securely in a way that only the data owner can alter. Because they enable decentralized organizations governed democratically by smart contracts and a record of digital “ownership” of settings or even items in the digital world, they are widely regarded as an essential component of the metaverse paradigm. The administration and security of our extremely precious health data is its most obvious application in the healthcare industry. Currently, data is frequently shared between numerous organizations in a way that, from the perspective of the data’s owners (us), is both opaque and unproductive. Health records are frequently kept on centralized servers, which puts our data in danger of theft (the dark web is believed to fetch between $70 and $100 for a single health record). It also means that accessing it, even for those with a valid need to do so, such as a doctor who is treating us, is frequently a drawn-out and difficult procedure.