The BioAsia conclave also heard Philippe Houben, Boehringer Ingelheim's head of Go-to-market and digital transformation, IMETA [India, Middle East, Turkey, Africa], discuss the opportunity the metaverse provides to drive an emotional connect with patients and caregivers.

“What I am fundamentally seeing is a difference when we talk about metaverse is the virtual reality - that is allowing experience not with the brain, but with your heart, an engagement with someone like if you are physically present,” Houben declared at a session moderated by Ram Deshpande, partner, digital transformation, at EY.

Houben expects a 'huge difference' in the way industry can engage with patients or the caregiver by bringing them through that immersive experience.

“We are experimenting [with] this and we do see a huge impact of bringing that emotional dimension within the way we are engaging with the patient. So it's a technology that is enabling those kinds of engagements; that emotional dimension is to me the game changer from a technology perspective,” the BI executive said.

Houben explained that patients don't always understand their disease progression and that could, among other reasons, impact adherence to treatments; similarly caregivers too may not understand these critical aspects.'De-mystifying' disease progression is important.

While industry has typically thus far tried to explain things using graphs or testimonials of patients, “the metaverse could allow us to experiment - how will disease progression impact my daily life?; it also allows us to explain that better to physicians and other caregivers”.

He reiterated the role of the emotional dimension, “because I would say it's much more powerful than explaining something to someone - let them experience it”.

In areas like mental health, the metaverse can potentially provide an environment where you can feel safe, because you're somewhat anonymous. “So there are some very specific use cases where the patient will see the benefit not to be physically in front of a human but to have a safe environment; besides distances [to access appropriate care/treatment] in India and a lot of emerging markets is a huge topic,” he said.

While, VR, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality have been deployed over the years to treat mental health disorders, there are concerns, on the flip side, that excessive time spent in 3D immersive games as in social media could itself lead to addiction, anxiety etc.

Last year, an article in General Psychiatry noted that living in a world within the metaverse could potentially lead to the worsening of specific mental health disorders, though with the anonymity of the virtual realm, more individuals may feel comfortable sharing their stories with professionals and others facing similar issues. “Hence, this rapidly expanding technology could significantly improve access to mental healthcare, especially given the present acute shortage of mental health professionals,” the authors Usmani SS, Sharath M and Mehendale M said.

The metaverse has impressive potential for many segments of society, but only time will reveal how its future unfolds, they added.

Houben, however, asserted that the metaverse is "not settled, it's an evolving animal and is permanently evolving", implying that it's difficult at this point of time to define a strategy that you could be looking back five years from now and determine whether you could achieve it or not.

“So beyond being curious, I would say be brave, because a lot of people would be doubting about the interest,” he said.

Industry for instance shouldn’t expect “a million physicians” to come onboard immediately, he explained, adding that “we are into a phase that you need to be brave, you will have to experiment/convince and as much as possible link your experiments with your business use case, because if you can demonstrate to your senior management, this is the way to be better and that's not only about technology, they will be listening to you.”(Also see "Boehringer Ingelheim’s Formula For Scaling Transformation, Digitization" - Scrip, 27 September, 2022.)

Nevertheless, ultimately, if the end users are not convinced of the benefits of such new technologies, “you can be trying, pushing, you will not be successful. So the question basically is that are the HCPs ready to go there, are the patients willing to go there? "

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