A paradigm shift in medical education and training with metaverse

Medical training has been infamous for the extraordinary time that is required to develop skills in the domain. In a world with a continuous deficit of skilled healthcare professionals, every new skilled worker adding to this workforce faster translates to more lives being saved.

XR simulation helping save lives
But technology is not just aiding treatment; it is also helping in the learning and development of the medical professionals increasing the overall productivity of the treatment.3D simulations using technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are some of the major technological changes that are helping medical practitioners train faster, with great accuracy even in the absence of more sophisticated tools and of the trainer themselves.

Some of the ways that XR simulation is aiding the healthcare professionals:
Cost and time reduction. Medical equipment are known to be very expensive, and have a learning curve of their own. One can get started with a couple of hundreds or thousands of dollars with getting a couple of these devices within a couple of hours without needing to set up major systems.

Low hardware limitation. The dependency on a large amount of sophisticated equipment can be off set as more of the simulation training programs can run with a standard set of inputs available on these devices.

Complex procedure preparation. Testing skills in an environment that might happen only a handful times in one’s career can elevate the pressure in such situations significantly whenever they occur. Experiencing extreme or complex cases simulated in a controlled virtual environment can make the healthcare professional all the more comfortable when in such a situation.Remote training. Oftentimes, the best trainers are not available in the vicinity and could involve a lot of logistics of bringing the trainer and the trainee together, but accessing them in a live life-like session is a possibility with their remote presence in the virtual training environment using either AR or VR.

Let us see some of the technologies in action and how they improve the lives of healthcare professionals.

AR guides spine neurosurgeon to success at John Hopkins
Recently, John Hopkins adopted AR to a live surgery in order to benefit from the computer interface that sits right in the field of view of the surgeon and feeds them with all the relevant information required to operate without deviating from the task.

Use cases like such, powered by new computing platforms like Hololens, Oculus, Varjo, etc., have immense potential to aid in skill development, assist in live operations, and ultimately make a significant improvement in the lives of patients as well as the healthcare professionals.

Similar products have emerged with a focus on medical training simulation and treatment planning systems in specializations, such as reproductive health and assisted reproductive technology.

Getting started with metaverse strategy for your care organization
Large hospitals especially need to make an active effort to keep up with the pace of technology. They need to become better informed and an active participant in the system. The first set of actions could be to experience a couple of such devices and help your staff get comfortable with them by just setting up an immersion lab easily accessible in the facility. Given how the cost of these devices has been dropping every year, there is very little in the way of excuses to not allocate some resources for them in the training and development budgets for all the benefits they could bring.