Imagine being able to partake in a virtual world with people around the globe from the comfort of your home in the physical world. You would be able to live, work, and shop in a 3D virtual realm where your identity would travel with you in the form of a digital avatar. You could have multiple avatars, allowing you to multitask and take on different roles. Through your avatars, you would be able to move from one experience to another in a world that has come to be known as the metaverse.

Despite its hype, it’s important to recognize that the metaverse is yet to exist even though its main components, virtual reality; augmented reality; blockchain; and artificial intelligence, do exist. Although the basics of the metaverse and its fundamental definition are still being developed, tech giants have begun to look at ways to expand the metaverse to current industries and businesses. Lately, companies have been working to apply the metaverse to medicine and wellness.

Post-pandemic telemedicine, or treating patients remotely, has become increasingly popular. Telemedicine allows doctors and patients to streamline appointments for ailments that are not severe and can easily be diagnosed. With the metaverse, the quality of these virtual appointments will improve, and patients won’t be limited to the physicians in their area. This could be crucial to patients who live in rural or underdeveloped parts of the world. Additionally, if a patient needs a specific specialist, they will no longer be limited geographically.

The metaverse could also be crucial to expanding the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). IoMT is the totality of records from medical devices and apps that record a patient’s day-to-day medical data. This data could be stored in the metaverse and be linked with a person’s avatar. This would give each patient their own personalized metaverse and provide doctors with a complete picture of their patient’s medical history.

Another area of treatment that the metaverse can revolutionize is therapy. Metaverse environments can be tuned to each patient, giving them scenarios tailored to their current needs and situations. Their reactions within these scenarios could give wellness providers a new and more accurate basis on which they could write diagnoses and treatment plans.

The accuracy of medical treatments could also be improved as the metaverse develops. Returning to the idea of avatars, a person’s virtual persona could serve as a digital twin. This twin would be generated from real-world data about a person and would exist in the metaverse. Doctors could experiment with different procedures and treatment options on the digital twin to see how the real-life person would react. Doctors and patients would know the outcome of multiple treatment options without testing on the actual patient, allowing them to proceed with the best option.

Ultimately, the metaverse is a vision for the next iteration of the internet that includes a shared and immersive digital space for humans to live and grow. It is crucial to remember that companies are still working to define and develop the basics of the metaverse. However, it shows promise to revolutionize not just technology but also humanity.