Abbott, a multinational medical device and health care company, and Blood Centers of America showed how mixed reality can enhance the blood donation experience at CES 2023.
During blood collection, donors wear VR headsets and enter the metaverse to divert them while remaining aware of their surroundings, ensuring a safe donation process. Donors’ eyes are continuously monitored and tracked for evaluation throughout the digital experience.
The virtual experience donors will enter is the result of research that examined the settings and environments donors prefer. Among them are gardens with soft music, and planting seeds that grow into colorful trees and flowers.
In addition to making the blood donation experience more pleasant, this experience could potentially bring in more new donors, since only about 3% of the U.S. population donates blood each year.
Currently, only a few Blood Centers of America locations will offer the mixed reality experience, and donors will be notified as soon as their area is ready to participate.
This new technology and concept appear to be another application of metaverse and mixed reality that can be employed in the medical industry. Other projects include Emirates Health Services (EHS) launching a metaverse portal to provide virtual medical consultation services and a collaboration between Wolters Kluwer and BioDigital XR to bring medical education and practice into the metaverse.
