Exploring the Opportunities, Expenditure, and Steps to Develop Metaverse in Healthcare

Confronting challenges like enhancing patient care, streamlining operations, etc, is common in the healthcare industry. Issues related to data interoperability, safety, and the efficient spread of medical information are evident in traditional healthcare systems.

Metaverse in healthcare emerged as a transformative solution by creating immersive and interconnected digital environments, ensuring it maintains its competitive edge in an ever-evolving digital landscape. The use of metaverse in healthcare has been evolving, breaking new ground in the inexhaustible cosmos of technology.

Doctors are available as per your requirement due to virtual clinics where physicians and patients can interact without any language barriers. Metaverse in healthcare allows experts to focus on patient care, reduce costs, and enhance the accuracy of diagnosis.

As per the report from Markets and Markets, the global metaverse in the healthcare market is poised to reach $79.6 billion by the end of 2028, growing at a CAGR of 52.9% from 2023 to 2028.

Metaverse in healthcare is entirely based on two valuable components: qualitative and quantitative information, where top healthcare leaders and companies are getting significant information and utilizing it to tailor result-driven marketing strategies toward products and services.

Metaverse in Healthcare: Advancements and Opportunities

Metaverse is already showing innovative ways of providing robust healthcare services. To perform healthcare experiments in a virtual setting, scientists and researchers are now using the metaverse as a platform for healthcare research and development.

Overall, the metaverse has enormous potential to revolutionize the healthcare sector by offering cutting-edge approaches that enhance patient access, quality treatment, and service efficiency.

Let’s have a look at some opportunities that the metaverse creates for the healthcare industry:

Telehealth

With the advancement of telemedicine, physical boundaries have been eliminated by getting merged with the world of the metaverse. Telehealth became popular during the pandemic and eventually augmented in-person consultations or visits with healthcare professionals for most patients and caregivers.

Integrating the metaverse brings immense possibilities by addressing immediate health needs and ensuring the delivery of healthcare services. It allows patients to access healthcare experts from the comfort of their virtual environment, experiencing convenience and accessibility. In addition, the metaverse is highly advantageous in supporting accurate diagnostics and personalized treatment plans, felicitating interdisciplinary care.

Telehealth represents a significant change in the way healthcare providers offer their services in immersive, virtual, and collaborative online settings, which promotes cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Digital Twins

A digital twin is a virtual simulation of any process, system, or product created using real data to learn more about its nuances. The concept of digital twins is expected to serve as “test dummies” for users, and can be used to forecast everything from how one can recuperate from surgery to the reactions patients will have to particular medications.

For instance, our development team at Appinventiv developed a frequency-based healthcare app Soniphi, where our team integrated bioacoustic science on mobile. Soniphi became a favorite platform for millions of users who could witness the relationship between the functioning of the human body and voiceprint.

Surgical Procedures with AR

With the assistance of AR, it is possible to use imagery from diagnostic techniques such as X-rays, CT scans, etc., to develop 3D models of the body internals. Metaverse in healthcare provides an optimistic environment and enables surgeons to learn and practice complex surgeries with exceptional accuracy.

Augmented reality also aids in navigating intricate anatomical structures by preventing damage to surrounding tissues.

Radiology Visualization

One of the major concerns healthcare professionals encounter is reviewing the medical images one layer at a time on the 2D displays. Enhancing the facility of visualizing medical images is a potential space for improving prognosis and surgical readiness. The introduction of metaverse for healthcare offers opportunities for more engaging and effective medical experiences.

Virtual reality, one of the metaverse applications in healthcare, is extensively leveraged to train its medical robots immersively. Also, an augmented reality imaging solution concurrently integrates machine learning algorithms to deliver vital image data for surgeons and support surgical planning as well as educational intentions.

Virtual Hospitals

Building a virtual hospital in the metaverse gives hospitals access to a wider geographic area, cheaper operational costs per patient, lower readmission rates, shorter wait times, and other advantages.

The rapid evolution of virtual hospitals is facilitated by the combination of technologies like cloud technology in healthcare, AR/VR, IoT, and, most importantly, metaverse in the healthcare industry.

Doctors can remotely watch their patients’ health conditions at hospitals, eliminating the need for in-person visits. Patients can monitor their health and act more responsibly, on the other hand. At Appinventiv, we developed a healthcare application like YouCOMM, a messaging platform that allows patients to request assistance and communicate their needs to the hospital staff using pre-recorded messages, voice commands, and head motions.

Digital Therapeutic

There are already indications that digital therapeutics create great metaverse healthcare opportunities. The field of digital therapeutics is expanding quickly, with uses like cognitive therapy, support groups, psychiatric assessments, rehabilitation, and – with the help of haptic sensors – even physical therapy made possible by VR and AR technology in the metaverse for healthcare.

The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the development of digital medicines that combine the best of the physical and digital worlds. For instance, nurses can visit patients in the metaverse and conduct daily check-ups and consultations with remote monitoring.

Analyzing the Factors Influencing the Cost of Developing a Metaverse Healthcare Platform

Now that you know the importance of venturing into the development of metaverse platforms in healthcare, you might be thinking about how much will this new initiative cost you and whether it will be profitable or not. However, knowing the exact cost of taking metaverse in the health and wellness industry can be tricky as multiple factors are involved.

The following factors should be considered when estimating the expense of developing metaverse platforms in healthcare:

Choosing the Development Team for Metaverse Healthcare Solutions

The selection of your development partner is the first element that affects the cost of metaverse development services. Choose to work with a firm with a team of capable, experienced developers for metaverse healthcare mobile app development services (such as Appinventiv).

Front-End Development

While a few front-end development programming languages and frameworks are open-source and secure, others have greater usage costs. Some front-end programming languages also don’t allow for tech stack modification. Again, all these factors significantly alter the cost of metaverse healthcare app development.

Backend Development

Backend development frameworks, programming languages, hosting servers, etc., contribute to the cost of the metaverse healthcare solutions while developing a metaverse healthcare platform. For instance, choosing a microservices design over a monolithic one provides better results and more cutting-edge solutions but at a higher cost. Similarly, using Node.js is less expensive than using Java.

The Application’s Complexities

In order to create a metaverse healthcare platform, you must also consider the complexity of the same. This includes the technology stack, the platform being used to create the metaverse healthcare platform, features and functionalities. The degree of complexity of the metaverse in the healthcare development method is determined by each of these variables.

UX & UI Design

One of the most important aspects of creating any platform is the UI or UX design because users must be able to see and interact with it immediately. Therefore, it’s crucial to use the most cutting-edge technologies to make the platform appealing to the users.

Based on all these factors, the cost to develop metaverse healthcare solutions ranges between $30,000 and $400,000. Read this blog to know more about the cost of developing a metaverse application.

Now that you are clear about the cost of developing a metaverse healthcare platform, check out the 5-step process of metaverse healthcare platform development.

Navigating the Process of Developing Metaverse Healthcare Platforms

From documenting your metaverse healthcare platform development requirements to ensuring a smoother launch, we follow an agile app development process:

Project Requirement

To understand your project’s concept and to fully comprehend your needs, Appinventiv experts will arrange a discussion with you. Before moving on to the project analysis phase, our team would actively engage with you to collect project requirements and get started with the metaverse project.

Design Requirements

The next step includes determining the look and feel of your platform, defining UI/UX strategy, prioritizing features, and planning the release. The stage also includes inferring your value propositions, characterizing your product, and formulating a well-defined scope of work.

Development Stage

After the release plan is ready and the scope of work is defined, we will start developing an MVP version of the application. With MVP, you save time by prioritizing core features and getting a quick launch in the market. Based on early market feedback, the team will  work on the advanced version of the platform.

Quality Assurance and Testing

The post-development stage to create Metaverse Healthcare includes comprehensive platform testing to verify its intended functionality. The total expenditure that is associated with quality assurance of the platform and its testing depends on the platform’s level of intricacy and the level of testing it requires.

The overall expense at this stage of developing metaverse in the healthcare market may amount to thousands of dollars. This stage is extremely important for the development of the platform to ensure trust and reliability among its users.

Maintenance and App Development

Following the release of metaverse platforms in healthcare, constant maintenance, and updation are essential to ensure the platform’s functioning and currency. The expenditure of these processes fluctuates depending on the intricacy and extent of support the program demands. Largely, the budget for maintenance and upgradation of the platform intended to build a metaverse for healthcare may amount to thousands of dollars every year. To ensure consistency and a strong association of metaverse in the healthcare market in the future, maintenance and updation are crucial.

Take Your First Step Towards Metaverse Healthcare Platform Development with Appinventiv

Developing a metaverse 3D space for the healthcare industry offers many advantages like individualized care, experiential learning, and remote healthcare services. Although security issues exist, healthcare institutions are incorporating metaverse to enhance patient results. Nevertheless, alert steps are vital to manage and lessen the potential risks associated with adopting metaverse at the development stage.

To allow users to build their own virtual worlds and engage in 3D interactive interactions, Appinventiv can build you an intuitive metaverse platform customized to offer your users a highly immersive experience. Connect with our metaverse experts to get started with your project.

FAQs

Q. What is the metaverse in healthcare?

A. The term “metaverse in healthcare” refers to the use of virtual and augmented reality (AR & VR) technology to build immersive digital environments where patients, medical staff, and students of medicine can engage with each other and with medical data in innovative ways. Numerous healthcare applications, including therapy, remote consultations, training for medical professionals, and patient instruction, can be carried out in the metaverse.

Q. How does the metaverse affect healthcare?

A. Developing metaverse healthcare has a number of advantages, including reduced costs associated with conventional treatment methods, improved patient outcomes due to increased provider engagement, and improved collaboration between various stakeholders within the health system, in addition to improving patient satisfaction through better access to high-quality medical services.

Q. What are some trends shaping the future of healthcare technology development?

A. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), and Blockchain are some of the latest trends that are shaping the future of healthcare technology development.

Q. What are the benefits of metaverse in healthcare?

A. The metaverse holds substantial potential for transformative impacts on the healthcare industry, offering various benefits that can enhance patient care, streamline processes, and advance medical research.

THE AUTHOR

Sudeep Srivastava

Co-Founder and Director