Singapore National Eye Centre, Singapore Eye Research Institute, Singapore, Singapore.
Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore.
Asia Pac J Ophthalmol (Phila). 2022 May 1;11(3):237-246. doi: 10.1097/APO.0000000000000537.
The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 has further increased the urgent need for digital transformation within the health care settings, with the use of artificial intelligence/deep learning, internet of things, telecommunication network/virtual platform, and blockchain. The recent advent of metaverse, an interconnected online universe, with the synergistic combination of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality described several years ago, presents a new era of immersive and real-time experiences to enhance human-to-human social interaction and connection. In health care and ophthalmology, the creation of virtual environment with three-dimensional (3D) space and avatar, could be particularly useful in patient-fronting platforms (eg, telemedicine platforms), operational uses (eg, meeting organization), digital education (eg, simulated medical and surgical education), diagnostics, and therapeutics. On the other hand, the implementation and adoption of these emerging virtual health care technologies will require multipronged approaches to ensure interoperability with real-world virtual clinical settings, user-friendliness of the technologies and clinical efficiencies while complying to the clinical, health economics, regulatory, and cybersecurity standards. To serve the urgent need, it is important for the eye community to continue to innovate, invent, adapt, and harness the unique abilities of virtual health care technology to provide better eye care worldwide.
2019 年冠状病毒病的爆发进一步增加了医疗环境中数字化转型的迫切需求，人工智能/深度学习、物联网、电信网络/虚拟平台和区块链都得到了应用。元宇宙是一个相互关联的在线宇宙，近年来出现了虚拟现实、混合现实和增强现实的协同组合，为增强人际社交互动和联系提供了一个全新的沉浸式实时体验时代。在医疗保健和眼科领域，创建具有三维（3D）空间和化身的虚拟环境，在面向患者的平台（例如远程医疗平台）、运营用途（例如会议组织）、数字教育（例如模拟医疗和手术教育）、诊断和治疗方面可能特别有用。另一方面，这些新兴虚拟医疗保健技术的实施和采用需要采取多管齐下的方法，以确保与真实世界虚拟临床环境的互操作性、技术的用户友好性和临床效率，同时符合临床、健康经济学、监管和网络安全标准。为了满足这一迫切需求，眼科界有必要继续创新、发明、适应和利用虚拟医疗保健技术的独特能力，以便在全球范围内提供更好的眼科护理。
