Boosting Health Care, with Data and Empathy The operation theatre is where the metaverse is making a discreet appearance: Augmented Reality (AR) headsets allow surgeons performing sensitive procedures to access patient information without having to look at a separate screen. Magic Leap, a technology company based in Plantation, Florida, makes such AR devices that superimpose 3D imaging over physical objects, MacDuffie said. “Surgeons can just look at the patient the whole time, but also see [clinical data] in an appropriate part of their field of vision.” The enabling spectrum of the metaverse takes other forms, too. End-of-life conversations are now an inalienable part of medicine. Being able to tap AR and its immersive aspects has helped harried physicians navigate discussions about mortality with empathy. MacDuffie pointed to Strivr, a technology startup in Palo Alto, Calif., whose AR platform offers training applications across enterprise scenarios. But the one Strivr calls “The Art of Empathy” relates to an immersive learning program it developed for the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital of Stanford to train physicians how to have better conversations with the parents of terminally ill children. Those are conversations which every physician dreads, as Strivr noted in a case example on its website. Strivr’s AR platform combined approaches, honed by neuroscience research, to design training sessions for the hospital’s physicians where they donned the headsets and repeatedly engaged in those conversations until they overcame their unease.