Immersive visualization facilitates visual knowledge discovery from scientific and medical dataset that are incredibly challenging to visualize. The virtual world of the metaverse is the next horizon in health care. Immersive virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) technologies for medical education have the potential to fundamentally change, improve, and reduce the cost of training and maintaining skills across all aspects of health care—in Maryland, across the United States, and in developing countries worldwide.

Currently, surgeons and other healthcare providers must remember how to perform surgical procedures. This is especially problematic for complex and often emergent operations like femoral artery closure, upper extremity fasciotomy, and subclavian artery procedures.

The UM-IHC will develop VR and AR tools for healthcare scenarios such as:

• Clinical encounters and patient interviews

• Planned surgeries and medical procedures

• Immersive analytics for healthcare

• Education and communication

The UM-IHC will facilitate immersive playback experiences from high-fidelity VR recordings that can be navigated in space and time for learning.

Immersive computing, through VR, AR, or a combination of both, has the capacity to significantly increase communication, situational awareness, critical thinking, and decision-making.