Speech by the President and Vice President of IAMM

With the emergence and continuous improvement of the metaverse platform, we can apply mixed reality technology to bring the virtual world into the real world for interaction to solve clinical and major health problems in real time and space (Figure 4). Although it is still mainly in the research stage, it will comprehensively change the medical education and research in clinical and major health needs, and assist the implementation and completion of the Healthy China 2030 plan.

(1) Change outpatient service efficiency: The metaverse medical platform can be applied to greatly improve the efficiency of outpatient services. In the future, most patients will not need to go to the hospital for medical treatment. The patient’s virtual avatar can appear in the metaverse medical outpatient department (“Meta” outpatient department) of the metaverse hospital (“Meta” hospital) to complete queuing, registration, and medical consultation on behalf of the patient. The doctor will consult with the patient’s avatar and can also provide medical treatment to the patient at home by inviting the doctor’s avatar to the patient’s residence. Of course, for surgeries, patients still need to go to the hospital.

(2) Significantly improve service efficiency: When encountering difficult cases that require consultation with well-known experts, the avatar of the “Meta” famous doctor (i.e., the metaverse hospital famous doctor) can be invited to the local hospital. This eliminates the need for travel and guarantees personal safety, while allowing the avatar to examine, consult, and perform medical examinations in real time and space. Through advanced biological sensors that fully sense changes in the patient’s physiological condition, the metaverse medical platform (“Meta” medical platform) conducts cloud computing and AI deep mining, assisting “Meta” famous doctors in guiding local doctors to adjust treatment plans and accelerate patient recovery (Figure 5).

(3) Achieve full coverage of remote medical care: Currently, independent space, device hardware and software, and professional technical personnel are required for remote medical care. In the future, all that will be needed is a pair of AR glasses that are linked to the metaverse medical platform, such as the BRM all-in-one machine, to achieve full-time and space remote medical care.

(4) Improving emergency efficiency: In case of an emergency, a “Yuan” renowned doctor’s avatar can accompany the emergency medical team on site to provide joint treatment. Specialized “Yuan” renowned doctors can also be consulted for guidance and advice on emergency treatment across time and space. This allows for personalized high-level treatment in ambulances, increasing the success rate of acute rescue in special cases. By supporting remote emergency response and mobile emergency modes for major diseases, as well as developing intelligent disease warnings and interventions for high-risk populations, joint treatment for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, among other technologies, artificial intelligence, data mining, virtual reality, and other technologies can be applied in the field of internet medical treatment to improve medical institutions’ abilities to prevent and control major diseases and critical illness treatment levels. (Figure 6)

(5) Achieving continuous education in all time and space: For example, we can directly virtualize the sun in our metaverse, allowing students to see the sun and adjust their distance to it to experience its visual effects. This is particularly suitable for medical education and research, as it eliminates the need for professors to be physically present to hold lectures. Depending on the needs of different locations, the avatars of professors can conduct lectures across multiple classrooms across the country or even globally. Moreover, they can interact with students in real-time Q&A sessions, just as they would face-to-face, to accelerate the improvement of the education level of the entire medical industry. (Figure 7)

(6) Enhancing the safety and efficiency of infectious disease prevention and control: The nCapp, developed using IoT digital medical technology for COVID-19, has been recommended by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) to assist doctors in early detection, diagnosis, isolation, and treatment of respiratory viral infectious diseases.

(7) Improving clinical research efficiency: Combining with digital twin technology, clinical research efficiency can be improved while also enhancing the safety of clinical research, achieving the vision of making mistakes on computer models instead of on humans.

The limitations of metaverse medicine mainly lie in human-machine integration and mixed reality technology. We began clinical verification of the metaverse medicine prototype (BRM all-in-one machine) as early as 2018 to address these issues. It was not until recently that we formally proposed metaverse medicine. Furthermore, this new concept requires new standards. As mixed reality and human-machine integration technologies continue to advance, they can be integrated with digital twin technology and can consider building a new medical system with blockchain technology, ultimately bringing virtual world medicine into the real world for interaction. Relying on metaverse medical experts, high-quality services can be provided for more patients in metaverse hospitals and metaverse medical centers.

Although the metaverse is still subject to the laws of natural science, it allows users to have any experience or activity. Therefore, there are already many applications, such as virtual office platforms, virtual shopping malls, and video games in the commercial sector, as well as all-time-space demonstrations in education and virtual house visits in the real estate industry. What is lacking in the real world can be supplemented with computer methods in the virtual world. With the development of computer technology, the metaverse will… (Figure 8)