The metaverse emerged as the key content of future society, and the medical community is embracing it. For example, medical school students receive VR or AR-based education and training, and a metaverse hospital opened where patients access the medical service on an online platform.
However, health experts pointed out that simply using a head-mounted display (HMD) and seeing avatars inside the monitor cannot be called metaverse. For doctors to use metaverse in real patient care, they need more advanced technologies and institutional development.
Health professionals gathered at the Health On conference on Wednesday to identify the status of the medical metaverse and proposed development strategies.
Park Chul-kee, a professor of neurosurgery at the Seoul National University Hospital, said the medical metaverse requires the advancement of interactive technologies. Park leads the Medical Metaverse Study Group (MMSG), recently launched by professors from the SNU College of Medicine.
Park said the medical metaverse could be realized only when people can communicate within a new layer of space and time created through the convergence of technologies, including VR, AR, AI, telemedicine, and the cloud.
When the virtual layer is interactively synchronized with reality, the medical metaverse will find the true meaning.
For this kind of communication and interaction, the existing “unilateral” technologies should be changed, Park said.
“We’re not talking about a situation where patients follow a program made with digital therapeutics. Instead, we should make a patient-tailored program to reflect the reality of patients,” he said.
Beyond the video-viewing with an HMD or collecting basic health data, the medical community needs cutting-edge devices such as “medical chairs” or “medical boxes” that provide quality information for diagnosis and treatment, Park added.
Professor Lee Byung-chul of neurology at the Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital said the nation needs improvement in the reimbursement system if the medical metaverse provides truly effective medical care beyond the level of “guidance service.”
“For clinicians to provide telemedicine and real healthcare services through the metaverse, the reimbursement is essential. But in reality, there are many institutional limitations,” Lee said.
Reimbursement requires medical quality, but the metaverse is mostly about a preventive approach to induce behavioral changes in patients. This makes it difficult to decide how to set reimbursement, he said.
“I hope the government could approach this issue more proactively,” he added.
The Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital recently opened a metaverse children’s burn center, but it focuses on burn prevention education and pre-treatment education. The burn center aims to provide patient care, but institutional support is crucial to do so, Lee said.
“Because most of the functions hospitals intend to realize using the metaverse are ‘services,’ the medical metaverse is not growing further,” Lee noted. “We have to think how to reflect the difference in medical services, regulated by the law, within the healthcare system.”