A field known as telepresence is frequently overlooked but may play a significant role in the metaverse and may soon enable doctors to enter the bodies of their patients.
As the term “metaverse” conntinues to gain popularity, medical uses of its virtual world are advancing and may soon enable doctors to enter the bodies of their patients.
Louis Rosenberg, a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and inventor, claimed in a recent blog article for VentureBeat that telepresence, a topic within the Metaverse, is frequently disregarded yet will play a significant role in the virtual world.
“While virtual reality brings users into simulated worlds, telepresence uses remote robots to bring users to distant places, giving them the ability to look around and perform complex tasks. If we combine that concept with another classic sci-fi tale, Fantastic Voyage (1966), we can imagine tiny robotic vessels that go inside the body and swim around under the control of doctors who diagnose patients from the inside and even perform surgical tasks,” Rosenberg said.
How would this technology work?
This type of health-related innovation is already being supported by technology. Endiatx, a company founded in 2019, specializes in micro-robotics inside the human body and has developed a tiny robotic drone called the PillBot that patients can consume through a pill.
The drone is a tiny remote-controlled submarine the size of a pill that can transmit real-time data to a doctor’s smartphone, tablet, or PC while being remotely operated inside the stomach and other regions of a patient’s digestive tract.
Other technologies, such assisted/augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, may potentially enable further deployment and development of such technology.
According to Ronald Ravel, South Africa B2B director at laptop manufacturer Dynabook, the technology could see adoption across industries during the next five years, despite its delayed uptake, in the manufacturing and medical fields.