Meet me soon at the Metaverse?

To date, the Metaverse hasn’t been launched due to several obstacles, yet it’s just a matter of time. After examining the current barriers, the Metaverse is facing in my last two blog posts, I’m happy to share with you the accelerating factors of the Metaverse’s arrival.?

The word “Metaverse” was coined roughly three decades ago, tough it seems nowadays we can’t run away from it.?

If so, the simple question been asked is why now?

The answer inseparable from several circumstances boosting the creation of the Metaverse accruing in the last few years.

These are the catalysts of the Metaverse bringing it closer and closer:

1. Ongoing technological advances.?

The technical challenges facing by the Metaverse are far from being small. Yet, the technology that moving us closer to the dream of the future Metaverse is improving by leaps and bounds. Constant progress regarding computing power allows larger virtual worlds to exist.?Cloud ?and?edge computing ?let intensive big data processes, such as graphics rendering.

5G?rapid adopting is enabling mobile devices to access virtual worlds more easily combining lower latency as well. Production cost?of augmented- and virtual-reality hardware is declining.

The creation of Blockchain, a distributed database recording data and data transactions ensuring only the owner of the data to make alterations and encrypt one’s information. This distribution creates absolute ownership of private data. Therefore, blockchain-like technology is about to be a mainstay in the future Metaverse securing personal data, maintaining trust among users, and providing durable databases. This major development is particularly important when it comes to medical records; implementing such solution makes it harder to abuse sensitive medical data.

2.?Major investments in metaverse infrastructure.

In 2021, Meta invested $10 billion in the Metaverse, and Google directed 40$ million for private equity fund belonging to Metaverses projects alone. Microsoft is proceeding quite fast with their approximately 70$ billion investment acquiring Activision Blizzard for the purpose of securing the Metaverse. And don’t worry, Apple and Amazon are not so far behind.

The amount of money being spend on the creation of the Metaverse wouldn’t be an outrage coming from random companies, but these five companies control the market. They are at the wheel of the cutting-edge technology, which means the Metaverse is not so far off.?

3. A wider set of use cases.?

Gaming in the metaverse already has mainstream traction. Consumer use cases are now expanding into new immersive retail, entertainment, sports, and educational experiences. Then there are the metaverse’s sizable—but less talked about—enterprise applications and opportunities, including?virtual employee training ?and on boarding and team collaboration with avatars, virtual prototyping in manufacturing and construction, and virtual-showroom displays for products such as cars. Even?government entities ?are experimenting with the metaverse.

Focusing on Healthcare, this shift can be lifechanging. Imagine medical interns practice operations inside the Metaverse perfecting their skills. This novel progress hopefully will minimize human error and potentially save lives.

4. The young generation is ready

Gen Z which makes up for over 30% of world population are more familiar with gaming, shopping, fashion etc. in the virtual world than in the real world. These “digital natives ” don’t see the virtual world as less real than reality itself.

As they look at the current situation, they have the responsibility to assemble the two worlds continuously. The Metaverse which will integrate their two worlds for them is the perfect solution for this effortful task leaving them to live their lives. Hence probably the most of Gen Z see the Metaverse as natural and eager to be introduced to it.

This change is highly important since Gen Z isn’t so young anymore, in less than a decade they will be almost a third of the Healthcare professionals workforce.

To sum up.

It seems that the Metaverse will surely happen thanks to technological improvements and major investments by the Big Tech, it’s not so blurry anymore.

It’s more about “When” than “if”.

In my last three posts I discussed the challenges and accelerating factors of the Metaverse. From now on this blog will focus on the implications of the Metaverse on Healthcare and particularly on the pharma industry.

More than welcome to Like, Comment & Share and be sure to stay tuned,

Yigal.?