Impact of Metaverse in Healthcare based on Architecture, Challenges and Opportunities

The Metaverse represents a rapidly-evolving archetype of the next generation of digital worlds, that seeks to create a fully engaging, hyper-spatiotemporal, shared space for people to work and play. Recent advances in emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence, and blockchain are driving the metaverse from a hypothetical iteration to an upcoming reality. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare systems worldwide have faced significant limitations, making it imperative to explore alternative healthcare solutions. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of how healthcare is evolving with the metaverse across six domains: telemedicine, clinical care, education, mental health, physical fitness, and pharmaceuticals. We examine the applications of the metaverse in these domains, discuss the technical issues involved, and propose solutions for developing future-proof medical systems using metaverse technology. The architecture is presented for implementing the metaverse in the healthcare sector and identifies key challenges that are currently impeding the global adoption of the metaverse in healthcare. Finally, we suggest open research directions for building healthcare systems using metaverse technology,