Samenvatting

The metaverse is one of the most promising technological frontiers in healthcare. It consists of three major components, working together to form a collective virtual shared healthcare space: telemedicine (through virtual reality or augmented reality), digital twin (a virtual, digital equivalent to a physical entity such as a drug, organ, patient, medical device, laboratory, or hospital), and blockchain (providing a secure way of storing patient records and other sensitive data). In healthcare, the metaverse could be used in several ways, with the end user being either the patient or a medical professional, or both. Some examples of the metaverse in healthcare exist, such as virtual environments to support surgical procedures, remote monitoring and rehabilitation programs, and telemedicine platforms for doctor-patient communication. However, uptake has been slow sometimes because of some specific challenges such as technical limitations, privacy and security concerns, regulatory barriers, accessibility issues and integration challenges. In this chapter, we introduce the healthcare metaverse by providing some background, discuss these application examples and challenges, and offer some future research directions, concluded with some major takeaways.
Chapter 9 of The Digital Doctor: How Digital Health Can Transform Healthcare. Ed. Chayakrit Krittanawong. Elsevier, 2025