Metaverse Deep Dive 3 looked past “cool tech” and focused on what actually changes healthcare practices and education: integrating XR, AI and digital twins into everyday clinical work.
Heena Juneja and Soniya Shrivas from Frost & Sullivan map how XR is shifting from “new tech” into real clinical work through supporting decision-making, training, surgical planning, therapy and remote collaboration. The key message is: don’t optimise isolated demos. Instead build for integration. Value is already visible in training, surgical planning, therapy and remote collaboration. The next leap is decision-critical use, which means AI-enabled smart glasses and spatial interfaces that deliver the right information hands-free, at the right moment. From this perspective isolated demos are not as useful as designing for scalability and integration.
“XR is not just one area. It supports healthcare from diagnosis to treatment and recovery. Instead of looking at many screens, doctors can see medical images, scans and patient data together in one view”, Shrivas explains.
The Frost and Sullivan duo emphasises that XR adoption accelerates because healthcare combines high risk, high precision and strong need for training. Technologies that allow clinicians to visualise, simulate and rehearse procedures before performing them on patients gain traction rapidly. At the same time, gaps remain in interoperability, certification standards and large-scale deployment.
“XR isn’t a futuristic ambition anymore. It’s already reshaping how clinicians work, how surgeons operate and how patients receive treatment”, Juneja adds.
Dassault Systèmes connects these practical XR use cases with a broader systems perspective built around digital twins. Jean Colombel describes how the concept of a virtual human twin brings together medical knowledge, physics-based modelling and real-world data to simulate patient-specific scenarios.
“A virtual twin is a scientific representation of the real world that integrates knowledge and know-how to simulate what will happen in reality. It allows clinicians to test strategies and explore possibilities before treating the patient”, Colombel says.
Beyond individual patients, Valeria Nuzzo from Dassault Systèmes highlights the importance of hospital-level virtual twins. Valeria Nuzzo shows how hospitals can simulate patient flows, room utilisation, staff workload and operational bottlenecks before making organisational changes.
“The virtual twin of a hospital allows you to test different scenarios and optimise key performance indicators such as waiting times, staff workload or room utilisation”, Nuzzo says.
The shared conclusion across the third Metaverse Deep Dive session is clear. The real transformation does not come from individual XR applications alone, but from integrating spatial computing, AI and digital twins into the entire healthcare system, from clinical decisions to hospital operations. Instead of asking where XR can be tested next, the more important question is how these technologies integrate into everyday healthcare workflows and scale to improve outcomes for patients, clinicians and healthcare systems alike.
March 5, 9.00-12.00, in cooperation with FIIF
Metaverse Deep Dive 4
March 11, 11.00-12.30
Metaverse Deep Dive 5 with Frost & Sullivan: Decision-Critical XR and Distributed Simulation Environments
March 26, 9.00-11.30 Hybrid workshop with Rails Ahead
Metaverse Deep Dive Workshop with Frost & Sullivan: From Growth Opportunities to Concrete Action