Metaverse Technology for intelligent Health Care: A Review of Potential Applications and Challenges

Background and aims: Today, Metaverse is an emerging technology in facilitating health servicesthat has great potential in health care. The use of this new technology in healthcare is oneof the most important determining factors for ensuring the general, physical, social and mentalwell-being of the human population in the world, which can lead to a significant reduction in costsand improvement of treatment. Therefore, the present study is trying to investigate the potentialapplications and challenges of using new Metaverse technology in healthcare.Method: In this review study, with an appropriate search strategy, all documents with conceptof metaverse in healthcare retrieved from databases such as Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus,Cochrane and IEEE were examined without time limitation up to March ۲۰۲۳.Results: The results of this study showed that the main services for using Metaverse includeeducational services, interventional services and communication services. Also, medical education,various surgeries, remote monitoring of patients in need of special care, access to data,better understanding of clinical results, virtual follow-up of patients with Covid-۱۹ and medicalimaging are the potential applications of metaverse in the healthcare. In other words, metaverse,with artificial intelligence algorithms, helps doctors prioritize critical patients, minimize possibleerrors in analyzing electronic health records, and make more accurate diagnoses. Other resultsalso showed that, the high implementation costs, obtaining consent from guardians, affordableadvanced care facilities, interoperability issues, loss of privacy, ethical concerns and agreementissues from healthcare administrations and organizations are among the main challenges.Conclusion: The use of metaverse in various healthcare fields is expanding rapidly, and whenpaired with Artificial Intelligence (AI) Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) mayprofoundly improve medical education, medical literacy, promote diversity, and more. While attemptshave been made to implement metaverse technology into healthcare in various ways thusfar, there is much room for future growth. So that the use of metaverse technology in healthcarecan improve the interactions of people and avatars by creating a sustainable and cost-effectiveparadigm and lead to the efficient development of the health economy and the industrializationof society.

کلیدواژه ها:

Metaverse ، Healthcare ، Artificial Intelligence ، Virtual Reality ، Augmented Reality