How Metaverse Is Reinventing Healthtech & Its Future

Despite being in its early stages, the metaverse is constantly developing. The technology, which combines Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and web 3.0 technologies, has enormous potential in healthcare. The Internet of Medical Devices, quantum computing, and robotics are all poised to completely transform the healthcare ecosystem. Metaverse is likely to change the paradigm of the healthcare system, improving surgical precision, therapeutic usage, and more.

Major healthcare companies and hospital chains are increasingly joining the virtual world of the metaverse to improve patient care. MRFR expects the global healthcare in metaverse market to reach $5,373 Mn by 2030, expanding at a massive 48.3% CAGR from 2024 to 2030, citing that many patients have also joined or are considering joining this virtual space.

Health information technology has been shown to improve healthcare quality and safety. Metaverse applications in healthcare can significantly improve patient outcomes by opening up completely new channels for delivering cost-effective treatments. Metaverse can be a great tool for healthcare professionals, allowing remote monitoring and telemedicine for geographically limited patients. 

How Metaverse Is Reinventing Healthcare

Metaverse promotes health 4.0 by combining AI, AR, and VR, improving patient safety outcomes, and allowing patients to interact and gain a clear understanding of their health condition. It is essentially the next version of the internet that uses AI, AR, VR, and ever-increasing connectivity such as 5G networks to create more immersive, interactive, and experiential online environments.

Since the metaverse will be the mode of online interaction in the future, it is considered one of the key technologies that would expand the serviceable area to a wider patent base globally, adding newer services and service delivery and payment models. As a result, this technology is expected to gain significant traction in the healthcare industry in the coming years.

How Metaverse Will Impact The Future Of Healthcare And Medicine

The healthcare system appears to be volatile as a result of the increasing pressures of prevailing issues such as chronic diseases, ageing populations, an insufficient health workforce and limited resources, and rising costs. It is now clear that the metaverse has the potential to be the most transformative factor in the healthcare industry. The technology will be used in five areas: clinical care and wellness, collaborative working, healthcare education, and monetisation.

The pandemic accelerated digitisation and automation in the healthcare system, and digital services such as telehealth became commonplace. With social distancing and contactless mandates, remote care became important, and telepresence, digital twinning, and blockchain became critical to influence healthcare. These three technologies will provide new methods to significantly enhance treatments that can bring favourable patient outcomes and reduce costs. 

Digital health is revolutionising care methods and is becoming a critical enabler in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. It is expected that VR/AR will play a causal role in the development of medical education training modules and the improvement of communication skills for clinicians and medical students.

These technologies will significantly improve comprehensive healthcare, including the current model of disease prevention and treatment, ushering in this industry. However, there is still a long way to go before the medical field undergoes the metaverse transformation.

Among the well-known companies in the healthcare metaverse market are Novarad Corporation (US), Brainlab AG (Germany), GE Healthcare (US), Meta Platforms Inc. (US), Siemens Healthineers (Germany), Nvidia Corporation (US), and Microsoft Corporation (US).

Healthcare Metaverse Enablers Of The Startup Ecosystem 

Various tech companies, startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and government bodies began to aggressively foray into the metaverse space, exploring existing and new concepts to assess the potential uses of the technology in medicine. For instance, on September 13, 2022, the North American Innovation Center (LG NOVA of LG Electronics) announced that it had selected 9 startups to build new businesses in digital health, Metaverse, and electric mobility.

LG intends to broaden its role in investigating new services and applications for enterprises seeking to leverage Metaverse capabilities.  Digbi Health, LifeNome, Mindset Medical, XRHealth, NeuroTrainer, and iQ3 Connect are among the healthcare and metaverse finalists for its global challenge program -Mission for the Future. These companies will collaborate with LG NOVA on new business ventures and try for investments to develop impactful solutions from LG and other investors within the LG NOVA ecosystem.

On the other hand, on September 12, 2022, XRHealth, a Metaverse provider of therapeutic VR solutions to improve patient care, announced that it has added NeuroReality’s cognitive training to its virtual clinics. NeuroReality provides an immersive VR gaming experience called Koji’s Quest for patients suffering from stroke and brain injury.