How the Metaverse Could Transform Home Health Care

First, it is important to recognize that healthcare is not a simple industry. Healthcare is one of the most complex industries in modern life, with significant barriers to entry (primarily due to the complexity of the industry) and very high barriers to exit (cost of switching).

As a result, healthcare providers (like any other business) have a strong interest in maintaining an edge over their competitors, regardless of their industry.

The Metaverse

The latest projections predict that the metaverse will reach critical mass in the coming decade.

Although it is too early to predict how the metaverse will change health care, we should first imagine what it might look like. A good place to start thinking about what the Metaverse might look like is home health care. Currently, home care services are difficult to access and often do not provide privacy as patients are treated at home or in hospitals.

While home care has some advantages (e.g., convenience for family members), it also has some disadvantages, such as limited confidentiality, lack of privacy, and interference with physician expertise or care plans.

Metaverse and Surgical Procedures

Similar to the operating room, augmented reality and virtual reality can also be used to educate and train future medical professionals, with VR being used to simulate complex procedures such as surgery, while AR serves as a guide during the procedure.

By using AR /VR technologies in this way, physicians and surgeons can learn by doing without putting patients' lives at risk by performing complex surgeries without the appropriate knowledge or experience.

VR is also being explored for use in classrooms because it offers training techniques that are much more hands-on than traditional methods. This is especially important when students are learning new techniques and skills such as laparoscopic surgery.

Transformative Healthcare Training in Metaverse

The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies in sports leagues is becoming increasingly popular, with many professional sports teams using VR and AR in a variety of different capacities.

There is a high demand for VR programs that support athletes' training by simulating challenging scenarios they might encounter on the court. Such technologies are used by many leading basketball, soccer, soccer, baseball, and field hockey teams.

These simulations can help athletes feel better prepared for the real challenges they face in these sports. The advantage of virtual reality over the real scenario is that they can train with less risk of injury.

The medical profession is in a constant state of flux, developing new technologies and treatments, while at the same time consumer demand for quality healthcare with a shorter turnaround time continues to increase. This puts a lot of pressure on physicians to train in new techniques so they can provide good care to patients; this leads to a large increase in training hours on top of their already heavy workloads. This could lead to the use of VR technology to simulate a wider range of medical conditions so that medical professionals can practice their new techniques, giving them more confidence in how they would handle them in real-world situations.

Hospitals and healthcare facilities are using and even pioneering virtual reality in many areas, from surgical training to physical therapy exercises and exams. For example, Freeman Hospital in Newcastle is using a simulator to train surgeons to perform hysterectomies in virtual reality. The simulator allows trainee surgeons to perform a simulated procedure before practicing it on a real patient; thus, they become more familiar with performing the procedure and can anticipate potential complications.

References:

Expert consensus on the metaverse in medicine https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2588914122000016

MetaHealth - How will the Metaverse Change Health Care? https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/2167692

A New Age in Health: Metaverse https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361039795_A_New_Age_in_Health_Metaverse

A revolution in health: Opportunities and challenges of the Metaverse https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9360475/

Metaverse Going Beyond Adoption https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/39395/metaverse-going-beyond-adoption-the-next-frontier-for-global-healthcare

Healthcare in the Metaverse https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=560b4ead-205f-49bf-846a-89936f2cacd7

On Application of Metaverse in Medical Education https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4052566

Health Score https://www.thehealthscore.com/product/