For senior living providers and the healthcare industry, in general, the metaverse offers game changing potential in improving resident care and helping staff do their jobs more efficiently. However, compared to other industries, healthcare has been relatively slow to get on the metaverse bandwagon, usually due to limited budgets.
Metaverse uses many virtual reality and augmented reality tools that can drastically improve patient care. For example, VR-based telemedicine consultations help fill access gaps in rural or other geographic settings where it’s more difficult for in-person doctors’ visits. Holoportation, which allows 3D models of people to be transmitted anywhere in real time, solves similar access issues by letting doctors virtually be in the same room as patients and examine them through 3D projections. And virtual pharmacies let patients pick up prescriptions from the metaverse, with medicine then delivered to their senior living facilities.
Adoption of metaverse technology, compared to other industries, is low for senior living and healthcare at large due to budget constraints, plus access issues to remote care equipment, patients’ negative responses to virtual treatment and patient data confidentiality concerns which would require security system installations or upgrades, according to The Healthcare Technology Report.
Senior living operators have reported success in using AR and VR technology to improve patient care. For instance, AR and VR are being used to improve medical exams as nurses examining patients communicate with doctors in remote locations via headsets in real time. VR is also improving psychosocial treatments for seniors and is increasingly accessible, affordable and easy to use, according to research published in the April issue of JAMDA, the journal of AMDA–The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. The study found that VR had a positive impact on treating anxiety, apathy, loneliness and depression.
By overcoming the challenges of metaverse implementation and harnessing the metaverse in patient care, senior living operators could see similar benefits as those already seen from AR and VR, observers believe.
