Published December 14, 2021
We have now completed another year tackling the pandemic. Our world changed in many ways during the last two years, and while the pandemic seemed like it was in the rearview mirror a few months ago, it is now throwing another punch in the form of the new variant omicron. But this column is not about the pandemic.
Every year, I do a yearly roundup of the healthcare industry looking back at things like the emergence of new health technology or the growth in investment in this space. This year will be no exception.
2021 was an interesting year to say the least. The pandemic has accelerated both technology development and adoption in all industries including healthcare. New technology solutions that would have taken years to be seriously considered in healthcare are suddenly in action tackling real-world healthcare problems. It is certain that not all such technologies will survive in the post-pandemic world, but some surely will.
AR, VR, Metaverse and Healthcare
One of the major events of the year was Facebook’s rebranding to Meta. This was brewing for some time, but Facebook finally pulled the proverbial trigger to change its branding. Mark Zuckerberg, in his statement about the rebranding effort, mentioned that the brand change is to align the company name with the future products that the company is building. He has been giving glimpses of metaverse, an augmented and virtual reality-driven universe, for many months before this event happened. In his words, it is the next big thing in the technology-enabled human interaction.