What is more suspicious than someone telling you, "You know they are inventing a way to...?"
A human being's first feelings in the face of novelty are similar to those of an investigator observing the suspect from afar.
The Metaverse is often subjected to this kind of mistrust, but while it is true that we are talking about a novelty transported from the gaming world, it is also true that what it allows us to play with is not always just a game: on the contrary, the Metaverse can be a real revolution for both the individual and the community and for many branches of science in its service.
First and foremost, medicine.
In fact, what more than anything else, has the primary purpose of helping humans, if not the health service?
MEDICAL TRAINING, ACCESSIBLE AND LOW-RISK
You know when as teenagers we were on an online platform destroying each other with weapons, fighting monsters, thinking up group strategies or experimenting with new shortcuts in totally virtual, sci-fi worlds?
We'll leave the weapons and monsters aside for a moment, but the logic of experimentation and collaborative experience were not so useless: cloud gaming technology now allows doctors in various parts of the world to practice a complex procedure on a test patient without physically meeting, but more importantly, without directly experimenting on a flesh-and-blood individual.
Think of a surgical procedure that has never been tried before, and think of how much a mistake in health care weighs today. With this kind of technology, you can finally make mistakes.
Make mistakes, learn, and repeat. All, in a virtual environment.
MANUFACTURING AND TRAINING MEET
Similarly, medical device companies-which have a very high economic value-and life sciences companies can also use this technology to teach and train health care professionals about their devices and therapies.
Radiation therapy, rheumatology, immunology are just some of the medical fields in which mixed reality is improving service and knowledge of practitioners.
Performance and timing are improving and being simplified, and consequently so are sales.
In Italy, for example, this type of training is already being implemented at Spazio MADE in Milan, where technology, research and creativity have given rise to 3.0 training in healthcare.
In fact, here there is an entire section dedicated to training in the Metaverse, but also to some digital tools such as AR and VR and artificial intelligence, which have the task of ensuring continuous training by fighting the obstacle of time and, more than anything else, of space.
Next to MADE we also mention a project we developed and are very fond of: METCHANNEL VR, developed for the client OLYMPUS ITALY .
The main purpose was to facilitate the training of doctors, nurses and instrumentalists, lowering costs and reducing the margin of error: we succeeded. By wearing a simple visor, in fact, medical personnel can experience and simulate extremely difficult operations and procedures, from anywhere in the world.
AUGMENTED REALITY SURGERIES ON PHYSICALLY REAL PATIENTS
Where precisely does the use of augmented reality fit in? When applied during a surgery, AR allows a patient's "twin" to be digitally projected above the physical body.
Surgeons can then compare CT and MRI data at the same time they perform surgery, "inside" the patient themselves. Some surgeons have already performed augmented reality surgeries on living patients. They have corrected spinal problems and removed tumors, plural.
How do you feel after reading this last passage?
Can investigators abandon their distrust of the suspect for a moment? Technology is making you a promise that is even worth your life. And that is precisely it, the value we should place on the Metaverse.
THE NEW DEFINITION OF TWINS: ONE REAL, ONE VIRTUAL
In the paragraph just concluded we mentioned the digital "twin": what exactly is it?
In medicine, this definition means a mirror of the real patient that has all the data needed by the doctor, from: ultrasound, MRI, computed tomography.
These are useful for planning surgery or monitoring the progress of a disease or its specific treatment.
Empa researchers have already created several hundred avatars and prototypes of real people suffering from chronic pain and are using them to test and predict the impact of drugs on them.
Another example is the work being done by NASA, with the creation of digital twins of astronauts who will leave on long-range missions to the Moon or Mars.
When they return, they will be able to check if everything is the same as before or if there is any change due to different atmosphere or micro gravity.
LET'S PLAY TRUST
If it is true that everything started from a game, it is true that now, this game can save our lives.
From the virtual skin of a character created for the purpose of full immersion, to the virtual skin derived from the same refined technological research, but useful for dermatology treatments.
It always takes a while before the air of novelty loses its suspicious consistency, and is recognized for the authenticity and usefulness of its use. So it will be with the Metaverse, and with all the improvements and simplifications it is promising us and which, as you have read, it is already implementing without wasting time to brag about them.
An American movie about good ideas said that they are like the bad boys in the park: they seem annoying until you give them a second chance.
Technology and interactivity can be good ideas, and their consumption in the medical field, can only prove it.
