Participants in Yale’s Medicine in the Metaverse summit gather on day 2 for a closing photo.
HSIS team members recently led the University’s first Medicine in the Metaverse Summit. The event, held at Yale’s West Campus on February 13-14, 2023, was conducted in partnership with Accenture Labs and Google. Hosted by the Yale Extended Reality (XR) in Medicine community, the event brought together over 50 representatives from 30 different institutions, including Yale faculty, staff, and students.
Lisa Gabriel and Ashley Long from Parker University demonstrate one the virtual reality simulation applications in use on their campus
The two-day summit was an invitational, focused discussion where leaders in healthcare and medical education engaged in active conversation about the current continuum of metaverse capabilities. The goal was to understand how to lay the foundations for further developments that improve patient care and enhance the quality and accessibility of health education. The discussions were highly interactive, with participants sharing their own explorations, successes, and plans with metaverse technologies, contributing to a summit report.
Yale XR Pediatrics team members Veronica Weser and Josh Rigsby experience a clinical simulation app at the peer demo portion of the Summit.
The metaverse is a continuum of technologies that includes immersive digital environments, virtual and augmented reality applications, digital twins, haptics, immersive headset devices, artificial intelligence engines, low latency networks, and cloud rendering. These technologies provide patients, doctors, researchers, faculty, and students with new ways to interact with the world around them. They have clinical uses ranging from treatments for PTSD and pain management to surgical planning. Instructional opportunities provide students with greater access to virtualized clinical environments, 3D anatomical models, and immersive patient interactions. Learn more about XR at Yale in our previous article Extended Reality Technologies Enhance Clinical Education.
A series of strategic planning activities help participants consider how best to support extended reality applications on their campuses.
Participants at the Medicine in the Metaverse Summit are already planning for further collaboration, including content sharing, group research projects, and forming an ongoing consortium to continue the collaborative work. The mix of industry and higher education health leaders brought a rich set of voices and perspectives to the discussions, paving the way for future advancements in healthcare and medical education through the use of metaverse technologies.
For further information regarding Yale’s investigations of metaverse technologies please contact Randall Rode, Randall.Rode@yale.edu.
