The first Italian hospital in the Metaverse is born in Cagliari
Patients will be able to enter with visors, PCs or mobile phones for bookings, tickets and reports. The presentation today at Binario F, Meta's space for the development of digital skills
ROME – Book a visit, pay the ticket or collect a report without leaving your home.
The first Italian hospital in the Metaverse is born at the Cagliari University Hospital Company, where patients can also enter virtually thanks to the use of visors, PCs or cell phones, taking advantage of the services that healthcare offers as if they were in person.
The new digital service of the Aou of Cagliari was presented today in Rome during an event at Binario F, the Meta space in the heart of the Capital for the development of digital skills.
The meeting, moderated by Dire journalist Carlotta Di Santo, was organized by Fondazione Italia Digitale, Pa Social and Aou Cagliari. Several representatives of the institutions, communicators and stakeholders will participate, including: Francesco Di Costanzo, president of PA Social and Fondazione Italia Digitale, Livio Gigliuto, president of the Piepoli Institute and general director of Fondazione Italia Digitale, the representatives of Federsanità and Fiaso, the organizations that bring together Italian healthcare and hospital companies, Professor Elisabetta Gola, vice-rector for Communications at the University of Cagliari.
“We started with the report,” explained Fabrizio Meloni, director of Communications and external relations at the Cagliari University Hospital Company. On the ground floor, citizens will find many digital and information services: they will be able to book a visit or pay the ticket, they will be able to book the collection of medicines, access their Electronic Health Record or monitor the situation in the Emergency Department. And this is just to give a few examples”.
Patients will also be able to speak “directly with the operators of the Public Relations Office as if they were in person” and then “Anna could not be missing – added Meloni – the 3D virtual digital assistant equipped with artificial intelligence, who will interact with patients 24 hours a day”.
But it doesn’t end there: the AOU of Cagliari is also setting up two other floors of the hospital in the Metaverse, where there will be space for Palliative Care and Pain Therapy, training and other services. For a healthcare system “increasingly at the service of citizens”.
Dr. Chiara Seazzu, general director of the Cagliari University Hospital Trust, then underlined: “We believe in technologies because we are strongly committed to providing answers to patients. It is no coincidence that healthcare is often a place of innovation. It is out of necessity and because healthcare must always find new and innovative ways to approach and provide answers. And when it does so, it must do so with determination and commitment, because this is healthcare, healthcare at the service of the citizen”.
For Professor Gola, technologies and communication have “always evolved hand in hand, since the time of the appearance of writing. The Metaverse – she said – represents a frontier in this evolution, because it allows computer-mediated communication to return to being ‘natural’, as it is immersive and immediate. At the moment it is still necessary to use devices that have their own complexity, especially for less young people who are not familiar with joysticks, keyboards, interactive videos. But this is an intermediate step towards transparent communication, which is also a facilitation for a series of people who may encounter difficulties”.
Finally, Di Costanzo complimented the Cagliari University Hospital Company which “is taking another important step towards the digitalization and innovation of citizen services. It is the first Italian hospital that focuses extensively on Metaverse and virtual reality to provide new services and new opportunities for relationships between PA and citizens. The beauty of this project – he underlined – is that it does not stop at the already extraordinary opportunity of a public relations office in virtual reality, but foresees further growth steps in the coming years. Being where the citizens are is a fundamental principle of PA Social as well as continuing, with conviction and quality, to run on the road of innovation by exploiting the main positive opportunities at the service of the community. The world of healthcare is not new to very interesting experiments and is often a trailblazer also in the sector of digital communication and information”, he concluded.