Facebook announced last year that it was committed to putting $10 billion into the virtual world: its metaverse division. And last week, news broke that Microsoft was nearing a $70 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the video game publisher of World of Warcraft and other top-selling games.

It’s clear that the metaverse — a new virtual reality sector that reimagines the internet as a 3D experience that users can be a part of — is being hyped by tech titans as the future of the internet, but what does it mean for the future of healthcare?

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new healthcare consumer conditioned to home delivery of medicines and receiving healthcare online through telehealth visits (including Medicare recipients). In what I’m calling the “medaverse,” a new mode of communication in health and the healthcare market will shift how patients interact with providers, receive information and care, and buy products and services. […]

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