Thursday, April 25, 2024, Educators in VR Med Health Team is thrilled to bring to ENGAGE XR the pioneer in “social prescribing,” the inaugural pharmacist ambassador for Personalised Care Institute (PCI) and Champion for the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP), Arun Nadarasah, CEO of the International Social Prescribing Pharmacy Association (ISPPA) and a prominent figure in the field of social prescribing. He will be talking about the challenges, ethics, and standards for prescribing medicines and therapies and treatments in the metaverse.
Online medical diagnosis and treatment started long before the pandemic, helping doctors and nurses and patients reach out to each other across distances through telephones, then smartphones and video conferencing. Today’s medical and healthcare industry is spending billions expanding into the virtual with augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, and holography. Virtual is the future of connecting patients, with thousands of doctors around the world exploring therapies and treatments in the metaverse.
The biggest push in prescribing and treatment is in psychological therapies dealing with the modern “pandemic” of loneliness, described by the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, as a leading risk for premature death compared to smoking daily. For more than a decade, therapists have been meeting patients in Second Life and social VR privately and in private group sessions, developing apps dealing with phobias, socialization, desensitization, and so much more. The potential for using the metaverse for social prescribing in primary care is not just in the future, it is now. Could virtual worlds revolutionize how we approach holistic well-being?
VR and XR offers easy to access opportunities for socialization and therapy, but also opens up the challenges. Arun Nadarasah will discuss the innovations and solutions. He has been recognised in esteemed journals and is a founding member of the World Metaverse Council (WMC) and won the “The Hilary International Award for Health & Care Leadership.” He helped develop programmes like FIP Train the Trainer (Digital Health in Pharmacy Education) and his involvement in initiatives like Precision Social Prescribing and “Decentralized Social Prescribing” (DeSocPre). Accepted into the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme Cohort 8, Arun will further develop Agentic Social Prescribing (ASP) from March 2024 to February 2025, showcasing his ongoing dedication to innovation in healthcare.
Educators in VR’s Med Health Team engage healthcare practitioners, managers and subject matter experts, who are actively applying immersive technologies to advance patient care and improve access, delivery and management of healthcare services.
Educators in VR is dedicated to integrating VR, AR, and XR into education and business. We cover all aspects of immersive education and provide professional training and consultancy. Founded in 2018 to bring together educators to solve the challenges of XR education, Educators in VR now represents over 4,000 global members and over two dozen Team Projects (special interest groups). Educators in VR offers training, production, and consultation services for immersive education in the metaverse.
Come join us Thursday in ENGAGE XR to discuss Social Prescribing in the Metaverse and how it will impact our lives and health.