The Highlights of the Panel Discussion

• Healthcare systems could engage in the metaverse through four main functions: provider-focused use of VR to provide realistic medical training and diagnostics, direct patient use of VR/AR focused on behavioral health delivery and patient education, retail use to engage patient populations in new precision wellness products and services, or VR/AR to passively assist patients.
• Metaverse applications could enable more personalized healthcare. This is through patient-specific pre-op planning and remote patient monitoring, versus the current model of the one-treatment-fits-all approach.
• Virtual reality with patient-specific images is transformational for pre-op planning, patient education, and physician planning; VR/AR solutions could enable health systems to recruit new talent as early career physicians are looking to work with systems that have access to the most immersive and cutting edge technologies.
• In order to overcome the challenges of patients and clinicians hesitant about VR/AR adoption, share the big idea vision of how impactful it could be, create a space for people to just try it, institutionalize the processes for adoption, and ensure the technologies will do no harm.