Once the boom of the metaverse as a new commercial technological object is over, we are finally starting to talk about its usefulness, which ranges across fields that can truly change our future. For example in medicine, and the news is that in Italy the metaverse arrives in hospitals, exactly inUniversity Hospital of Cagliari which announced the opening of a Metahospital. Practically a revolution. The benefits of technology entering daily care are enormous. In the new virtual structure, created in collaboration with Half and presented in Rome at Binario F, you enter wearing the Oculus virtual reality viewer, but also from a PC, tablet and smartphone. At that point you find yourself in front of an environment that seems real, divided like all medical facilities: on the ground floor you book a visit, pay the ticket, book the collection of medicines, just as you can access your health file electronically and monitor the wait in the emergency room.
On the first floor the virtual environment presents the Public Relations Office, and if the place remains digital at that point you can talk to real people to obtain information. The advantage is considerable: first of all because the Metahospital will be at this point open to citizens 24 hours a dayand then because an expansion is already planned which will include training facilities but even a pain therapy department. In short, it’s just the beginning. The use of the metaverse in medicine, as has been said, is truly a way to break down frontiers in the field of health that reality still sees as distant.
Over the last ten years, progress has been notable: digitalisation has transformed the healthcare sector with technological solutions that facilitate the provision and access to care and the first hospital like the one to be opened in Italy is from the Thumbay group, launched in 2022 in the Emirates. Where not only virtual reality, but also augmented reality have extended the use of avatars to interact with doctors, facilitating the use of international services without physical travel.
Technologies like Microsoft HoloLens in fact, they allow immersive virtual consultations, while AR solutions like those from ThirdEye allow rescuers to share live images with doctors for timely interventions. Also, the metaverse improves diagnosis and the medical treatment thanks to rapid data sharing and remote monitoring, with VR technologies that can reduce geographical barriers, allowing consultations between continents. While the “digital twin” concept enables medical simulations based on patient data to predict health outcomes and risks. Mental health services also benefit, for example by helping children with autism develop social skills in safe virtual environments.
Then there is the field of training, in which the metaverse offers future doctors the possibility of observing and practicing procedures in 3D contexts, encouraging innovative and immersive training. In practice we are at the beginning of a new era of medicine, and Italy is finally part of it. The case of Cagliari is only the first of those that will bring accessibility to care into the future.
Obviously, there are still issues to address: data security, accessibility for less tech-savvy people and
regulations on privacy and the use of health data that vary from country to country. But once you can talk about technology in the right context, everything will follow. Even, perhaps, a healthier and longer life.