The Cagliari University Hospital Company opens the first hospital in Italy in the Metaverse. A facility where patients can go even remotely, without leaving their homes, using the services that healthcare offers as if they were in person.
The new digital service of Aou Cagliari was presented today in Rome at Binario F, the Meta space in the heart of the Capital for the development of digital skills . Present were Francesco Di Costanzo, president of PA Social and Fondazione Italia Digitale, Livio Gigliuto, president of the Piepoli Institute and general director of Italia Digitale, representatives of Federsanità and Fiaso, the organizations that bring together Italian healthcare and hospital companies, Elisabetta Gola, vice-rector for Communication of the University of Cagliari.
The hospital in the Metaverse of Aou Cagliari will be for everyone : you can enter with the oculus, obviously, but also simply from a PC, tablet and smartphone. To enter, simply follow the instructions on the website www.aoucagliari.it.
"We started with the relationship," explains Fabrizio Meloni, Director of Communications and External Relations at the Cagliari University Hospital. " On the ground floor, citizens will find many digital and information services: they can book a visit or pay the ticket, they can book the collection of medications, enter their Electronic Health Record or monitor the situation in the Emergency Department . And this is just a few examples." But patients "will also be able to speak directly with the operators of the Public Relations Office as if they were in person." Anna, the 3D virtual digital assistant equipped with artificial intelligence from the Cagliari Aou, who will interact with patients 24 hours a day, could not be missing.
The AOU is also setting up two additional floors of the hospital in the Metaverse, dedicated among the many functions to palliative care, pain therapy, training and other services . Chiara Seazzu, general director of the Cagliari University Hospital Trust, explains that «at AOU we believe in technology 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 it does so, it does so with determination and commitment because this is healthcare, healthcare at the service of the citizen».
For Professor Elisabetta Gola, Communications Protector at the University of Cagliari, "technologies and communication have always evolved hand in hand, ever since the appearance of writing. The Metaverse 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 older people who are not familiar with joysticks, keyboards, interactive videos. But this is an intermediate step towards transparent communication that is also a facilitation for a series of people who may encounter difficulties".
Francesco Di Costanzo, president of PA Social and Fondazione Italia Digitale, congratulates «the Cagliari University Hospital Company that 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 citizen . The beauty of this project 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 is continuing, with conviction and quality, to run on the road of innovation by exploiting the main positive opportunities to serve the community. The world of healthcare is not new to very interesting experiments and is often a trailblazer in the digital communication and information sector».
