Rapidly evolving technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality and digital twins, will have enormous impacts on the relationship that human beings will have in the future with their doctor and, more generally, with their health and psychophysical well-being . All within the great ecosystem of the metaverse, a very interesting potential evolution of the internet that I have talked about in more depth in numerous articles and posts, starting from here.
The perception that we often have of the relationship with the doctor is on a fairly broad spectrum and depends a lot on the experiences we have had in the past: we range from situations of extreme excellence to others which, unfortunately, have not been so satisfactory. Much of the difference between these two extremes lies in two fundamental factors: the competence of the professional and the availability of advanced and efficient technologies.
On the first of these factors, the competence of the doctor, there is very little to do, it is a matter of knowing how to choose the right professional for our needs.
The second factor, on the other hand, highlights a relevant fact: the more technology dedicated to healthcare is available, the more significant the impact on the health of the population, both in terms of prevention and from the point of view of diagnosis and identification of the correct therapy. Even in this field, as in many others, it is not enough to focus on the impact that can be obtained today from current technologies, because true innovation will be achieved in the future with technologies that are emerging today, or with the significant evolution of those which are enabled today.
Remaining within the perimeter of the technologies that will enable the metaverse ecosystem, there are some very interesting scenarios that can be glimpsed on the horizon and on whose core technologies a lot of investments are being concentrated in the world, therefore we have the possibility to start designing new services, taking care to conceive them in such a way that the right actors, the doctor and the patient, are at the center of the ecosystem, and not the technologies which, as usual, are simply an extraordinary enabling factor.
Doctor training with virtual reality
It goes without saying that training in the health sector is an element of extraordinary importance. In general, having a trained professional is always better than having one unprepared, but if the professional has to make a diagnosis, indicate a therapy or perform surgery, it is clear that the bar of the necessary competence rises a lot. Anyone who has been on an operating table I guess can agree.
An extraordinary evolution of traditional medical education will soon be enabled by technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. The possibility of seeing firsthand the functioning of the human body in its smallest details, being able to study all its characteristics, understanding the possible pathologies in all their evolutionary stages and understanding how drugs or therapies can help healing or relieve symptoms, are all factors that greatly increase the impact obtainable from the training. The possibility of entering a virtual human body and understanding its mechanisms, from the simplest to the most complex ones, will be an extraordinary opportunity that will be granted to anyone in a few years, naturally starting with those who will have to treasure that training for his profession: the doctor.
Therefore, a new market will soon open based on the creation of all those contents, applications and services capable of enabling this type of training: from the generic virtual worlds of the human body, to specialized platforms dedicated to single systems or single pathologies, up to arrive at complete virtual environments capable of totally simulating, also thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms, the ways in which a certain pathology reacts to drugs and treatments.
Not only basic technology, therefore, but also and above all contents, applications and services, with the possibility of activating a “creator economy” also in specialized and professional fields such as this one.
Visiting the patient with augmented reality
During the Covid-19 pandemic, many doctors started making visits virtually, mostly using the classic videoconferencing tools. It is clear that these are not strictly medical visits, which in all probability would need physical contact and an empathy that can hardly be replicated in an environment of that type, but for some methods of interview, in which it is not strictly necessary a real visit, it is indeed a very good solution.
It is clear that, in any case, a face-to-face visit is almost always the best solution. In the future this type of experience could be even more effective because, thanks to augmented reality, our doctor will be able to have, within his field of vision, all the data concerning us, without having to go and look for it on his computer, but simply looking at us through his smart glasses.
In addition to showing all the relevant data, these tools will also be able to warn the doctor in the event that we do not follow the therapy scrupulously or in the event that our wearable devices have detected some anomalous data between our vital parameters or between our behaviors. In practice: if the doctor advises us to do a certain type of physical activity and we are a little lazy, the doctor will know it without even having to ask us.
This, combined with all the vital parameters collected by the wearable devices, will provide the doctor with an extraordinarily clear picture of our clinical situation and will allow him to significantly improve his diagnostic ability and also that of correctly indicating the most appropriate therapy.
All these data, collected from various sources, will allow in the future to create a real “digital twin” of the patient, a data-based platform capable of simulating a large part of the human body of that single patient, and which will be able to greatly increase the performance of the doctor, to the full advantage of our health and our longevity.
Also in this field, in addition to technology, there is enormous room for growth for the creation of applications, contents and services, both in the field of data collection and in that of analysis through artificial intelligence algorithms, up to innovative methods to show them to the doctor and the patient.
The interaction between human beings and machines, especially in the case of augmented reality of the future, will be the subject of many studies and experiments, because the relational models we use today with the devices we have available will simply be ineffective.
The augmented surgery
Surgery is an activity in which technology has been playing a fundamental role for many years. Surgical robots, such as the extraordinary Da Vinci, are incredible machines capable of considerably improving the surgeon’s work and furthermore, by proceeding in this direction, the surgeon will have to greatly expand his skills in order to be able to make the most of the machines that will gradually be put on him available.
Even in the case of traditional surgery, however, in the near future we will have increasingly significant impacts generated by the technologies available, in particular due to the intelligent use of data and the possibility of showing them in real time to the surgeon directly within his field visual.
In this sense, augmented reality will play a fundamental role, the surgeon will have smart glasses at his disposal able to inform him in real time of any alteration of the vital parameters, and will be able to access all the information necessary to improve his performance, all without having to never the need to take your eyes off the operating field.
Conclusions
These are already existing technologies, but today still not completely ready to be used in such delicate environments and where complete system reliability is a fundamental characteristic, but these technologies evolve exponentially and their future impacts will be much more relevant than expected. today we are able to imagine.
Obviously, we are still only at the beginning in this field.