Metaverse-Enabled Internet of Medical Things: A New Paradigm for Personalized and Precision Medicine

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize various industries by enabling real-time data collection, analysis, and remote control of interconnected devices, leading to improved efficiency, automation, and decision-making. The IoT paradigm has been expanded to include new research fields, one of which is wireless body area networking. With a wide variety of embedded devices that bridge the physical and digital worlds, the usage of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) for clinical applications has significantly increased. As a result, it has become possible to develop a substantial healthcare sector that is advantageous to patients. These smart medical spaces will contain wireless sensors that can monitor vital signs including the occupant’s blood pressure, pulse, and respiration in addition to their resting position and daily activities. It will also measure dust in addition to these other parameters. Medical informatics, a combination of medicine and information technology, will transform healthcare by reducing costs, eliminating waste, and saving lives. Telemedicine has gained wider acceptance and adoption, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend is closely related to the concept of the metaverse in medicine, which can be defined as a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. As it lays the groundwork for virtual healthcare delivery, VR and AR technologies are being increasingly used for medical training and simulation. Medical schools and healthcare organizations are exploring the use of VR to train healthcare professionals as in VR environments. The use of wearable devices and IoMT is on the rise. There is an increase in the use of wearables by patients to monitor the status of their health. Healthcare providers are looking for methods to integrate these data into patient care. In this chapter, we introduce the basic concepts of the metaverse and related aspects, express their technicalities and characteristics, and demonstrate the application of the metaverse in the field of medicine.