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Metaverse Driving Next Wave of Telehealth Transformation
Metaverse Driving Next Wave of Telehealth Transformation

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Abstract

Telehealth technology was seeking its user before pandemic and gained tremendous growth during Covid19. The growth was unpredictable and it opened up new opportunities for improvenment; the succsess of these iprovements will dictate its future whether it can hold its user base and contitnue the growth story and leverage the advantges it has attained due to pandemic. Metaverse offers a wide array of potential solutions which can bridge the gap between the patient and provider service delivery specially in vast country like India - health experience that is lacking in tlehealth. This blog provides a view on the potential application area and related tech scope in the enormously growing field of telehealth or more generally transformed virtual health.

 

1. Introduction

Telehealth or virtual healthcare was in use for long but severly limited to tech enthusiasts mostly due to policy restrictions from payers, and patient experience was still in evolving state. During the start of COVID-19 pandemic, use of  telehealth surged as patients and healthcare providers sought ways to safely access and deliver healthcare Gradually the policy restrictions were lifted to facilitate the process. Major-changes and factors, borne out of necessity :

1) increased patient willingness to use virtualhealth,

2) increased provider willingness to use virtualhealth,

3) payer aceptance of regulatory changes enabling greater access and reimbursement

– further enabled rapid adoption and evolution in the technology.

2.1 Trends

According to estimates by McKinsey in US market, April 2020 overall telehealth utilization for outpatient visits and care reached an all-time high of 78 times higher the level in February 2020 prepandemic levels.Telehealth utilization stabilized at levels 38X higher than before the pandemic in February 2021. After the spike phase of April 2020 more than 32 percent of outpatient visits, care is occurring via telehealth, utilization levels have is stabilizing, ranging from 13 to 17 percent across all specialties.(1) Similar trend is expected in India geo adoption.

 

Table 1: Telehealth Claims (Comparative Chart)

Telehealth claims volumes, compared to pre-Covid-19 levels (February 2020 = 1)

(OPTIONAL BASED ON WHETHER FIGURE IS ALLOWED)

Source: McKinsey

 

2.2 Opportunities

During the tragic pandemic, telehealth offered a bridge to care, and now at a much changed scenario it offers a chance to reinvent virtual and hybrid virtual/in-person care models, the new goals transforming to  improved healthcare access, outcomes, and affordability. An estimated $250 billion of US healthcare spend could potentially be shifted to virtual or virtually enabled care.

Considering the financial aspect, Investment in virtual care and digital health has skyrocketed to record levels in 2020, with 3X the level of venture capitalist digital health investment in 2020 than it had in 2017. Continuing with the trend Digital health startups raised $29.1 billion across 729 deals,  double the amounts of 2020’s  $14.9 billion.But recent trend shows . But according to more recent reports like Rock Health’s report in 2022 digital health funding saw a sharp decline to $15.3 billion from 2021 level of $29.3 billion. Still the investment levels are encouragingly high.

2.3 Metaverse for Solutions and Benefits

The current virtual care model is likely to evolve to optimize hybrid virtual and in-person care delivery; the business model, moving from purely “virtual urgent care” to a range of services enabling longitudinal virtual care, integration of telehealth with other virtual health solutions, and hybrid virtual/in-person care models, addressing the main pain areas of care delivery to improve consumer experience/convenience, access, outcomes, and affordability. Metaverse is one of the technologies that has huge potential in transforming the userexperience for patient as well as provider.

  • Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality driven – Mental health care has tremendous potential in transforming mental health care delivery. Mental health is one of the area which has seen highest growth driven by stigma associated with the area and complemented by convenience of accessing the service. Metaverse is definitely going to transform the parient experience with highre scope of taking pont of care delivery to the home of the patient. The continuation of tretment can be achieved with higher success rate; and taking the jouney to wellness loop, making the experience continuous. With less expected breakout in tretment, the overall cost of care is expected to come down.
  • Elderly Care will definitely encounter is transformation in wellness care delivery. Patients will have better experince while having consultation with doctors. As this segment of population account for more than 50% of healthcare expenditure, higher adoption driven by Metaverse will definitely drive down the health expenditure.
  • Greater and quick access is one of the unique-selling-point of virtual care. Emergency Care and medicine which gets a very little window of tretment in traditional model have potential of a changed business model –doctors  Virtually present at emergency patient site can provide care and medication to patient with help of care providers even at ambulences. This will significatly improve the outcome for emegency patients. It will significantly cut down the time get the first medication or treatment, help quicker diagonosis and more time for hospital emergency care departments in directing patients to right type of specialization.
  • Telehealth and virtual helth has its higest revenue in outpatient care. The main challenge it faces is the user experience that the patient as well as the provider perceives while providing the health service. Metverse is inherently designed to improve that experience. The ore principal Metaverse is bridging the gap using VR and AR. Gradual improvement in metaverse adoption may transform the patient care experice, which gradually can help more speciliaztion to grtaer utilization of virtual healthcare channel. Better user experience will simply outweigh the traditional model of outpatient care delivery, as the ease of access is the greatest strenth of virtual care delivery model ; and the cost reduction is a natural outcome. This can further increse the scope of delivery it can achieve with doctors being able to attend more patients with ease of access.

Indian IT Organisations and statup firms can leverage its earlier experience of Virtual health and Telehealth practices in some of the major healthcare providers exprore opportunity in the area of Metaverse. It can definitely play a part in tranforming the experience for healthcare providers globally including India.

 

3 Conclusion

The Virtual care delivery or telehealth technology aided by Metaverse definitely faces some barriers—such as perceptions of technology security and associated legal challenges— they remain to be addressed to sustain consumer and provider virtual health adoption. The conservative and higly regulatory environment is also definitely a challenge, but Covid19 has shown the benefits outweigh the challenges and Metaverse adoption in  virtual care is definitely going to transform telehealth; and going to change it for greater and sutained growth.

 

References

  1. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/telehealth-a-quarter-trillion-dollar-post-covid-19-reality
  2. https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/report-digital-health-funding-declines-153b-2022
  3. https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/4e1853c0b4885112b2994680a58af9ed/telehealth-hps-ib.pdf
  4. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/digital-health/digital-health-funding-topped-29b-2021-almost-doubling-2020-s-record-breaking-year

 

 

 

 


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Amurta Khatua
Research Analyst

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