The Amazing Possibilities Of Healthcare In The Metaverse
The Amazing Possibilities Of Healthcare In The Metaverse
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The metaverse is a hot topic at the moment, and much has been written and spoken about its potential to revolutionize gaming, entertainment, socializing, work and commerce. Not so much has been said, however, about how it could affect healthcare – but this is another field where its impact could be transformational.
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Firstly – for those who are still understandably confused – what is the?metaverse? Well, the reason there’s a fair amount of confusion is that no one is quite sure at the moment, as it’s somewhat up in the air. What’s generally agreed on, however, is that it’s effectively the next version of the internet – one that will take advantage of?artificial intelligence?(AI),?augmented reality?(AR),?virtual reality?(VR), and ever-increasing connectivity (for example,?5G?networks) to create online environments that are more immersive, experiential and interactive than what we have today.
Metaverse involves the convergence of three major technological trends, which all have the potential to impact healthcare individually. Together, though, they could create entirely new channels for delivering care that have the potential to lower costs and vastly improve patient outcomes. These are telepresence (allowing people to be together virtually, even while we’re apart physically), digital twinning, and blockchain (and its ability to let us create a distributed internet). Let’s take a look at each one of them in turn:
Telepresence
Known in healthcare as telemedicine – the provision of medicine as a remote service. This experienced a surge in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before 2020, just 43% of healthcare facilities had the ability to provide remote treatment to patients. Today that figure stands at 95%. For routine consultations that don’t require a physical examination (or which can be carried out visually), doctors and nurses have found that they are able to more quickly and efficiently diagnose many of the minor conditions that make up the vast majority of their caseload via a telephone or video call. This will undoubtedly persist in the metaverse. However, virtual reality – a key technology that enables the next-level immersion that partly qualifies a platform or application as part of the metaverse – opens a whole new range of possibilities. Anyone who has tried it will know that headset-based VR experiences convey a far greater sense of “being there” than other virtual environments, such as websites, messaging apps, or social media.
Telemedicine consultations, particularly through VR, mean patients are no longer limited to being treated by particular clinicians due to their physical location. If you’re in Europe and the best specialist to deal with your particular condition happens to be in India, you can effectively be in the same room simply by putting on headsets. Scans and tests can be carried out at a facility local to you, and the data transferred to the specialist, wherever they are in the world. It’s particularly useful in areas like China where there is an acute shortage of medical professionals, as well as for patients in remote regions who would ordinarily have to travel great distances to be seen by healthcare professionals.
Another area where it can be particularly beneficial is therapy. Environments can be personalized to individual patients – VR is already used by psychologists and psychiatrists in aversion therapy, where patients can interact with situations that cause them anxiety, in safe environments where every aspect of the interaction can be closely monitored and controlled.
Digital Twins
A?digital twin?is a virtual model, or simulation, of any object, process, or system, generated using real-world data, for the purpose of learning more about its real-world counterpart. In the case of the metaverse, the digital twin could be of the patient themself.
Jack Latus, CEO of Latus Health – an online healthcare provider specializing in occupational health – believes that digital twins will eventually become “test dummies” for individuals that can be used to predict everything from how we will recover from surgery to the reactions we will have to specific medicines. This will come about through our increasing ability to map and understand individual genetics. During a recent conversation, he told me, "We'll be able to fast-forward – so if we age this twin by ten years, based on these interventions we're doing – how does this affect the twin?
“You start to almost be able to see into the future … we'll see that this is the outcome we're going to get if we follow this protocol for the next ten years."
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The top three threats to post-Covid FSI security
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How tech can guard against the most modern forms of cybercrime
Throughout the global pandemic, FSI organisations have been under increased pressure to continue to deliver an array of services – they have had to adjust to remote and hybrid working, as well as supporting consumers with loans and Government-backed payment schemes. The key to the pandemic response was adaptability, availability, and speed – and FSIs rose to the challenge with gusto. But now, security and compliance are back on top as one of the most important factors for FSI organisations to focus on, and technology will be crucial in the fight back against a growing number of cybercriminals.
Cybercrime is now as profitable as the drugs trade?
Cybercrime has evolved during the pandemic too, and cybercriminals are advancing their tactics, at scale, to capitalise on how profitable it has become. In fact, cybercrime is now comparable to the global drugs trade with regards to the level of profit and syndication involved in cyber criminal’s operations, where groups are created, and each member is paid for a particular expertise. Attackers evade detection with high levels of sophistication and move money extremely quickly. They also operate cross jurisdictions, taking advantage of a lack of law enforcement collaboration between some nations.
Of course, not only are FSI organisations high-value targets for cybercrime, but they are also potentially liable for additional costs when protecting their consumers from being the victims of increasingly sophisticated scams and fraud. Insurers are having to pay out large sums when victims of ransomware and email compromise claims, with additional pressure coming from consumers and regulators. FSIs must be cognisant that the risk is evolving rapidly, and they themselves are huge targets for attack – particularly when nation state actors are taken into consideration.
The top three threats
When it comes to cybercrime,?research from Microsoft?revealed the three key areas FSI organisations need to protect against when it comes to the changing threat landscape, with each being operationally, reputationally and financially damaging. Each is growing in prevalence and complexity.
Phishing continues to be the most common cyber threat, with 70% of all attacks starting with phishing or credential compromise. Phishing emails are designed to trick an individual into sharing sensitive information, such as usernames and passwords with an attacker, most commonly using malicious domains which masquerade as well known, legitimate login pages. Attachments may also contain malware, designed to be released on to endpoints and into the target network. Meanwhile, credentials and other types of information are obtained by the attacker for later abuse or sale.
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Secondly, ransomware is one of the most operationally impacting cybercrimes, as we see criminal actors performing reconnaissance on a target victim to infiltrate their critical infrastructure and potentially gaining access to financial documents and insurance policies to identify an optimal ransom demand. Ransomware has grown to include a variety of extortion techniques enabled by human intelligence and research. A common attack involves a threat actor deploying malware and scripting that encrypts and exfiltrates data and then holds that data for a ransom, often demanding payment in cryptocurrency.
Thirdly, while not the most prolific type of malicious email in terms of quantity, business email compromise (BEC) is becoming a growing concern and could be considered the most financially impacting cybercrime of all, equating to 40% of all financial crime on the internet. Email compromise is one of the growth areas of cyberattacks, particularly when we consider the abuse and resilience of the supply chain. BEC attacks occur when an attacker pretends to be a legitimate businessperson often in a position of authority, most often by using a compromised email address, or spoofing a company domain. It benefits from the complexity of financial accounting, by monitoring financial or business-related messages to intercept. One party to a financial transaction is impersonated to authorise transactions or divert payments to an unauthorised recipient. In this case, it is particularly insidious as the person whose credentials and email account were compromised would unknowingly cause another person or company to become a victim.
Technology plays a crucial role in the defence against cybercrime?
Technologies such as cloud, AI, data analytics and multi-factor authentication can all play a crucial role in protecting FSI’s critical infrastructure against cyberattacks, especially considering external stimuli including nation state actors, the continued proliferation of hybrid working and the rapid spread of disinformation.
Many FSI organisations are reconsidering their business models and are looking to the Cloud, to seek innovation and increased security capacity, as well as cost optimisation. We have seen a shift in emphasis over the last few years, as boardrooms learn that cybersecurity is fundamental to every aspect of their business operations, but more education is critical to this. FSIs must make it an organisational priority to increase that understanding and awareness of the threats involved from cybercrime across their businesses, as well as being cognisant of it as an evolving and sophisticated risk.
As well as the agility and flexibility the cloud can provide, one of the biggest benefits of a cloud-first strategy from a cybersecurity perspective is having access to threat intelligence and trend reports. Cloud service providers are actively monitoring a variety of different threat actors globally, whether they are ransomware operators or nation states, and disseminate intelligence about the evolving tactics and techniques, which enables organisations to evolve their response.
FSI organisations stand the best chance of defending against cyberattacks by being empowered with knowledge and supported in their security and compliance objectives. Cloud service providers have a huge role to play in the future of cybersecurity. Not just in terms of protecting companies, but also protecting nations as well.
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