Meta released a new commercial showing the potential the metaverse could have for training surgeons.
The commercial, released June 15, says the metaverse will allow surgeons to practice on patients virtually before laying their hands on real patients.
Meta also said that the virtual platform will allow surgeons to practice as many times as they want.
The metaverse, an interactive digital environment, was introduced during Facebook's rebranding to Meta.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting on the virtual platform to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce.
But, people have had their reservations about its transformative abilities for healthcare.
Albert Rizzo, PhD, director for medical VR at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, told Politico that a metaverse puts patients' privacy concerns back into the spotlight because people tend to be less cautious when they're using VR.
"There's a hell of a lot more going on when you’re interacting in an embodied way in a metaverse context," said Dr. Rizzo.
Without privacy protections, he compared it to "having a drone following you around in real life, monitoring everything you do, and then passing that information on to whoever."