The Yale Extended Reality(XR) in Medicine community hosted the Medicine in the Metaverse summit at Yale’s West Campus on February 13-14, 2023 in partnership with Accenture Labs and Google. Yale faculty, staff and students were joined by over 50 representatives from 30 institutions.
At this invitational, two-day, focused discussion, leaders in healthcare and medical education engaged in active conversation to better understand the current continuum of metaverse capabilities and how to lay foundations to be ready for further developments that improve patient care and enhance the quality and accessibly of health education. The mix of industry and higher education health leaders brought a rich set of voices and perspectives to the discussions. Sessions were highly interactive with participants contributing to a summit report, as well as sharing their own explorations, successes, and plans with metaverse technologies.
The metaverse is an evolving a continuum of technologies -- immersive digital environments, virtual and augmented reality applications, digital twins, haptics, immersive headset devices, artificial intelligence engines, low latency networks, edge computing, cloud rendering – that provide patients, doctors, researchers, faculty and students with new ways to interact with the world around them. Clinical uses range from treatments for PTSD and pain management through to surgical planning. Instructional opportunities provide students with greater access to virtualized clinical environments, 3D anatomical models and immersive patient interactions.
Medicine in the Metaverse Summit participants are already planning for further collaboration, with discussions underway on activities such as content sharing, group research projects and forming an ongoing consortium to continue the collaborative work.
More photos from the event are available here. For further information regarding Yale’s investigations of metaverse technologies please contact Randall Rode at Randall.rode@yale.edu.