The metaverse is a continuum, a spectrum of digitally enhanced worlds, realities and business models that have the power to transform healthcare. Instead of the internet as a disparate collection of sites and apps, the metaverse is a 3D environment that offers a new dimension of interactivity.

The metaverse offers an evolving set of possibilities for how we live our life and experience healthcare. It will transport people to nearly any type of world we can imagine, letting us interact with clinicians, peers and enterprises at a distance. Healthcare organizations will shift part of their operations to the metaverse, maintaining their own internal virtual environments so employees can work from anywhere and collaborate in new ways based on data that can be authenticated.

The metaverse is evolving fast in healthcare and across industries. In the next decade, it will revolutionize nearly all aspects of life and business, allowing collaboration in virtual spaces, augmented physical places and a blend of both. And it will create new lines of business and transform interactions between people and organizations.

In the metaverse, organizations can transform how they interact with their customers, and how work itself gets done through immersive collaborative experiences. Healthcare organizations will be able to transcend time and space to simulate interactions, shorten learning cycles and practice procedures, such as in surgical training. The metaverse will enable more life-like virtual therapeutics and will empower patients to manage their health and perform self-care. It also offers opportunities to help healthcare employees build empathy around the human experience.