Digital expert Cheemin Bo-Linn offers executive playbook for Web 3

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview. I'm Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our global content resource examining big themes that will impact the C suite and executive boardrooms worldwide.

Today we're exploring the metaverse future, and I'm excited to welcome in Cheemin Bo-Linn, a renowned business executive and entrepreneur who has served as a CEO, fortune 100 Vice President, C-suite officer and board director over the course of her career. She serves and has served on the boards of seven public companies and multiple private companies in Canada. The United States, Europe, and Australia, in several capacities. Bo-Linn has been recognized by the Financial Times as a top-100 global diverse board director, a top-50 Board of Directors by the National Association of Corporate Directors, and one of STEMconnector’s 100 CEO leaders in STEM. She was also inducted into the Women in Technology’s Hall of Fame. Cheemin, thank you so much for joining me today.

Cheemin Bo-Linn: Great to be here, Joe. Thank you for asking.

Kornik: Wow, what a resume. I just read that intro and as I've said, you've served on multiple boards, public and private, on three continents. So, I'm wondering what role you see for the board as it begins to think about Web 3 and the metaverse; where can boards be most valuable?

Bo-Linn: Having previously served as board chair and lead independent director, it's apparent that the board can be a valuable resource as it performs its fiduciary duties. A board that is diverse, competent, and well informed can ask the right questions of management as they navigate yet another market disruption—this time, the metaverse and the world of Web 3, or what we call the 3D internet world. It's not so much as if, but when and how much and where do we invest? The board must have a critical eye on risk and return on investment. As the physical and virtual worlds meld together in the metaverse, both the board and management must stay focused on what problem they are solving to satisfy current and future customer needs and to beat competition as they reimagine the possibilities. This transformative disruption can make the impossible possible.

So here are the areas that the board can add value. The board can ask questions as an example in three key areas: One, digital governance; two, financial and business risk; and, three, metaverse literacy. Let's take the first point, digital governance and ethics policies. We should ensure responsible use of artificial intelligence, implement data governance and enable trust, and be knowledgeable about new governance models.

Number two, financial and business acumen and risk ensure a balanced view of key realistic opportunities, for example, in delivering upgraded experience. Anticipate the associated risk and value creation. Examine the financials, including assumptions and investment thesis. Ask, are we investing strategically? Or is it hype or hope? Understand accounting and legal matters, monitor management's use and leveraging of tools as it conducts metaverse risk scenarios.

And lastly, point three--metaverse literacy. The board can add value when it is educated and asks management critical questions to validate those capabilities and growth strategy. Ask questions to determine their understanding of technology, interoperability, ethical norms, regulation, privacy and security of employee and customer data, fraud prevention, digital identity loss, and just their understanding of the overall ecosystem. The board should ask questions in regard to use cases to ensure it's in line with the company's growth strategy.

Kornik: Thanks for that, some great advice there for boards. And Cheemin, you've also been a CEO. So, as the C-suite starts to consider the business implications of the metaverse as well as potential investments in both resources and capital, what advice would you offer to the C-suite and why?

Bo-Linn: If I were to look at the considerations, and narrow it down to one, my key advice is: Have a different mindset. Focus on levels and cadres and investments required to become a future leader in this virtual space versus the starting block of assessing your current capabilities. You'll be surprised how two different starting points will have different outcomes. And then determine the framework in the gap, reflect on the relative success in the last major shift, which was digital transformation. Benchmark yourself, compare yourself to your competitors and the industry leaders. Are your peers making similar investments? What have you learned from early use cases? Also, discuss your company's leadership role in the metaverse: Is it to develop technology, solutions, standards, policies, or regulation?

Kornik: Well, speaking of investment and the C-suite, I know some companies have hired Chief Metaverse Officers to oversee the strategy, the risk, the governance of the metaverse. Do you think that's necessary and what value could a Chief Metaverse Officer add?

Bo-Linn: Let's look at what is happening now. As companies prepare themselves for the next chapter of the internet, the Metaverse, some companies such as Procter and Gamble, Disney and LVMH have hired Chief Metaverse Officers to manage and maintain the company's online presence. Nike and Gucci have hired people to facilitate their metaverse presence. But without such appointments, perhaps you can wait before appointing a Chief Metaverse Officer as you develop use cases and the metaverse matures. But act now. Start exploring the possibilities within the metaverse. Also, companies may need to wait because the skills of an ideal Chief Metaverse Officer are complex. Skills desired in such a person include both creative and technical experience, ranging from virtual reality, augmented reality, cloud computing, Blockchain, gaming experiences and engines, 3D modeling, animation tools and/or computer programming languages.

Let's recall what a Chief Metaverse Officer should do. He or she drives a vision, understands the new ecosystem and leads the execution of the metaverse initiative within the company. A Chief Metaverse Officer is the single point of contact and manages the brand image, mission and vision across virtual platforms. So, at least start forming a team. Be aware of the opportunities and the risks as you navigate the metaverse. Companies may have just a few years to develop the use cases, learn and test assumptions before appointing a Chief Metaverse Officer. Remember, Gartner predicts that by 2026 about 25% of the people around the world will spend at least one hour a day in the new virtual metaverse world for work, shopping, education, or socializing and entertainment. So, it's not a matter of if the metaverse will evolve, but when it will be fully deployed and adopted.

Kornik: Thanks, Cheemin, for that great advice to our business leaders.

Bo-Linn: Thanks again for allowing me to share my thoughts leadership on the metaverse and the new internet age.

Kornik: And thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. For Cheemin Bo-Linn, I'm Joe Kornik. We'll see you next time.

Tech visionary says AI, education can bridge digital divide to meet 2030 UN goal

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti Interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our global content resource examining big themes that will impact the C-Suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. Today, we’re exploring the metaverse future, and I’m excited to welcome in Amna Usman Chaudhry, a financial economist and strategist for blockchain, the metaverse, and Web 3.0. She’s a graduate-level lecturer with teaching experience in London and Dubai and is working on some impactful projects, including one with the United Nations. Amna has been named one of the top 100 women of the future, the global winner of the Women in Web 3.0 award, and she’s been listed on the Women in FinTech Powerlist. Amna, thank you so much for joining me today.

Amna Usman Chaudhry: Thank you Joe, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Kornik: The metaverse has certainly had its share of ups and downs the last few years, and hype cycles, but so far in 2023, I feel like there’s been a lot of emphasis on AI. In particular, generative AI. So, how do you think AI and generative AI will impact the metaverse?

Chaudhry: So, AI has been here for quite a long time but generative AI has really sparked everyone’s imagination because it has created a whole new creator economy, and I think people understood just how much potential generative AI offers to revolutionize industries. So, I think it’s really exciting and it will definitely have a great impact on the metaverse.

So, for example, imagine you have a dream house and it’s modern, it’s like big windows, maybe there’s a high ceiling, etcetera. So, imagine you type that into a prompt and then you have a virtual representation of that house and then you can invite your friends there and go see it out, and maybe even have your architect there and get an idea of exactly what you want. So, this is where we are going, and this is really exciting because we have a lot of generative AI that deals with text-to-3D.

For example, we have GET3d by NVIDIA, we have Make-A-Video by Meta, we have DreamFusion by Google, and we have so many more as well. This really saves time as well because it’s very time consuming to build a metaverse world. So, when you have this, then they already fast-paced acceleration that’s taking place in the metaverse is accelerated and you can focus on the more important aspects.

Kornik: Right, and I know you’re very passionate about education. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you think the metaverse and Web 3.0 will bring to education in terms of its inclusivity and in terms of leveling the playing field?

Chaudhry: Education is one industry which is still yet to be disrupted properly, and we can see how much there is a need for evolution. Just take the COVID pandemic a few years ago. I know students and children, they had to sit [in form of] screens, and it was really difficult for them to sit all day and understand. So, with the evolution of the metaverse, you could put up a virtual reality headset. You can go in and see the pyramids of Egypt for your history class. You can go to the Jurassic era and see the dinosaurs. You need to kind of put a headset on to see just how immersive it is.

There was actually a study done by PWC which says that virtual reality education is four times better at training than the classroom. Also, the students who take part in it are four times more engaged. It’s actually after a certain number of headsets, 375 headsets, I believe, it is actually cost effective as well when you go into the skill. So, there’s a lot of potential in education.

Now, I think when we talk about emerging technologies, we also need to kind of keep into account that it is inclusive. So, we need to make sure that these technologies are—the emerging tech world is evolving super-fast—so we need to take a step back and look that there are still 2.7 billion people on the planet who do not have access to the internet, and 1.3 billion of those are children. So, this is why initiatives like Giga are so important.

Giga is an initiative by UNICEF and ITU that aims to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030, and they’re using these latest technologies like NFTs, blockchain, Web 3.0, etcetera, to kind of bring their vision to pass. So, we should always get excited about how the metaverse is going to evolve the education sector and the digital landscape, but we should also keep in mind that initiatives like Giga—bridging the digital divide is important, so that the future of education remains as inclusive as possible.

Kornik: Right, and you mentioned NFTs there. It seems like you think they’re going to be one of the big disruptors, maybe along with blockchain in these immersive spaces in the worlds of Web 3.0 and the metaverse. So, why do you think NFTs are so important?

Chaudhry: There is a lot of benefits of NFTs. I think, previously, I mentioned just with the education as well, NFTs are also being used as tool for good. I think that’s something that is often overlooked and that is something that gets me personally most excited for the potential of why NFTs are so important. NFTs offer the same advantages that blockchain has: transparency, decentralization, security, and they’re one of a kind. So, identification as well.

Going back to the example of NFTs as it were for good, we have, again, Giga where, for UNICEF’s 75th anniversary, they released 1,000 NFTs for the Patchwork Kingdom NFTs, which were made via real data collected from Giga’s Project Connect. What that did was raise more than $700,000 for Giga’s initiative to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030. Now Giga is coming up with an NFT 2.0 collection, which aims to be the largest open-sourced decentralized database of every school in the world. And eventually, although, it’s not in the plan yet, eventually, there is a possibility of those school NFTs to be digital twins in the metaverse as well.

So, there is a whole evolution. I think the crypto market and the blockchain NFT market has slowed down as compared to last year, but there was a study done by Geneva Research, which was published around mid-2022, which says that around that time, there was 24 million NFT transactions, and in five years alone, that number is going to rise to 40 million NFT transactions. So, the sector is definitely growing. The best part is the fastest growing NFTs are the NFTs that are linked to the metaverse. So, from 2022, 600,000. By five years, 2027, we will have that number to 9.8 million. So, there is immense growth, and NFTs and emerging tech as a whole are definitely an exciting future ahead.

Kornik: Right, and I mentioned in my introduction all of the awards that you’ve won, right? You were named one of the top 100 women of the future, you’re a global winner of the Women in Web 3.0 award. You’ve been named one of the most inspirational women of Web 3.0 and the metaverse. So, I have to ask you as a woman leader in this space, how do you think we’re doing and how optimistic are you about the future of women and diversity in general in the metaverse, and if we’re not where we need to be, how do we get there?

Chaudhry: So, first of all, I’m very excited about the future of the metaverse in terms of female. I know a lot of females who are working in the metaverse sector and it is always amazing to see the brilliant minds who are in the space. So, I know, for sure, that there is a lot of brilliant women leaders who are leading the metaverse sector. However, we still have a long way to go because some of the top metaverse platforms such as Sandbox, Decentraland, and Roblox, etcetera, all of these are led by men. So, we do have—I think we have Everyrealm, which has a female CEO—but majority of the leadership in the other metaverse platforms are still men. We need to encourage women to kind of set up in the metaverse.

Companies also need to have an active DEI (diversity, wquity, inclusion) initiatives within their companies to ensure that these women are working and encouraged to join. There should also be more educational initiatives, more trainings, etcetera, and I think this is the mindset that we had when Women in Tech, the global Women in Tech Movement, collaborated with Giga and set up for women’s day this year an initiative to encourage more women in Web 3.0 and the metaverse. And I am really grateful to be part of that initiative where I’ll be giving a masterclass and cutting everything down to really basic details to kind of encourage more women to come into the metaverse, etcetera, and not just the metaverse, in Web 3.0 as a whole.

Kornik: We actually spoke to Melissa Slaymaker for our program earlier. We did a Q&A with her, who’s the global talent director for Women in Tech. I know you know her as well.

Chaudhry: I know. She’s brilliant as well.

Kornik: Finally, Amna, I just have one more question for you today and that is, if you could just take a look out 2030 or 2035 and tell us what you see when you see the metaverse in those years, what do you think is possible?

Chaundry: I think the future is exciting, especially now that we have generative AI to kind of really accelerate the already fast pace of the metaverse. So, imagine, Joe, that you can sit in your TV lounge and switch on the TV. So, in 2035, you will switch on the TV and then there will be a whole metaverse around you, and if you’re watching an ad on coffee, you would be able to smell it. I know this might sound farfetched but these technologies are actually here in 2023.

So, for example, LG TV is working on a metaverse-based TV called Sansar, and then you have the smell of the metaverse technologies such as OVR technology. So, these very much exist. So, everything would be much more immersive by 2035. The healthcare sector would be really benefiting from virtual realities. Sustainability would be benefiting from the metaverse as well. Not just in terms of carbon emissions. Digital twin technology, it would be the norm, and hopefully, by then the education sector would be more inclusive as well, because like I mentioned, Giga aims to connect every school in the world by 2030. So, hopefully, by 2035, the digital divide would be much, much less. So, there is a lot of hope for the future.

Kornik: Right. The promise of the metaverse being a great leveling of the playing field or the great equalizer in terms of opportunities from a global perspective. Amna, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Chaudhry: Thank you, Joe. I really enjoyed it.<>Joe:   And thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti Interview. I’m Joe Kornik. We’ll see you next time.

Microsoft’s Charles Drayton: The metaverse will benefit from a Web 3 world

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti Interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, a global content resource examining big themes impacting the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. Today, we’re exploring the metaverse future and I’m happy to welcome in Microsoft Charles Drayton, Digital Contact Center platform lead for the chief product office at Microsoft. Prior to joining CPO, Charles was the chief technical architect and worldwide healthcare and life sciences lead at the Microsoft Technology Center in Chicago. Charles has an extensive background in retail, manufacturing, and healthcare, and is the creator of the Intelligent Healthcare Experience, the largest showcase of healthcare technology anywhere at Microsoft.

Today, I’m happy to turn over the interviewing to my college, Kathie Topel. Kathie is a Director with Protiviti’s Business Performance Improvement practice. Kathie, I’ll turn it over to you to begin.

Kathie Topel: Thanks, Joe. Charles, the metaverse has gone through all sorts of hype cycles the last 18 months or so. Lately, it seems there’s been more negative news. Where do you see us in the cycle and has your overall perception of the metaverse’s potential impact changed?

Charles Drayton: I think first we have to think about what exactly the metaverse is and what it isn’t. Part of it is, I don’t think there is necessarily a universally agreed upon definition of the metaverse itself. I think people often think of the metaverse as VR and AR, MR, XRs all being interchangeable. That’s not really the case. I think VR can be a component of the metaverse, but the metaverse at its heart is really just any shared digital landscape, any place where people can go and interact with each other. To that end, there are actually a number of metaverses that exist already, and many of them have had a fair degree of popularity. So, I don’t necessarily think it’s failed. I don’t necessarily think it’s on the way out. I think what people often believe the metaverse to be is still yet to manifest the way that I think people want it to manifest.

In many respect, it’s very similar to cryptocurrency where I think the Utopia and the vision of cryptocurrency was that we are going to have this universal free currency that would exist for everyone and would be without borders and would allow anyone to buy anything anywhere and would just free us from the shackles of nations and in reality it just became another speculative investment vehicle. [Laughter] I think in many respects the metaverse is very, very similar in the sense that while we might have conceived of it as being this digital universe where people can come together without borders and all of that, I think in reality it’s really taken a couple of forms. Some of it is gaming, and gaming in nature. The other aspect of it is really speculative in nature as well, where you are buying digital real estate and buying and selling it. Very similar to what we’ve seen with cryptocurrency. It’s taken on a somewhat different form, and where it’s going to go, I think, remains to be seen, but I’m very interested in seeing what the next version of this is going to look like.

Topel: How would you really characterize what Microsoft’s view of the metaverse is at this point in time and has it shifted recently?

Drayton: I think we’ve always had a more pragmatic view of things when it comes to this. Sure, there is a metaverse aspect to it, and there’s still going to be a number of years before the metaverse reaches whatever its final form is going to be, but in the meantime some of the aspects that are common in the metaverse such as virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, as we call it, or XR, are all things that we have areas of investment in. I think our view of it at Microsoft—and I just want to clarify, I don’t speak on behalf of Microsoft even though I work at Microsoft. This is my opinion of it, not necessarily the company’s position, so I want to make sure that I’m clear on that, but in my view, from everything that I’ve seen, everything I’ve been researching, and everything I’ve experienced that the metaverse itself is going to take a more practical form for organizations like Microsoft primarily in business types of applications.

So, rather than it being a gaming platform, which I think is primarily going to be where you see a lot of consumer use of the metaverse, we’re going to see it more for B2B-type scenarios. An example of that might be the ability to have a metaverse digital twin of some sort of commercial real estate, and then use that to plan out what actual real estate is going to look like. We’ve already seen some used cases of that with the HoloLens within the standpoint of construction, or the standpoint of manufacturing, the ability to have digital twins that would exist through a corporate metaverse, where I can see a digital replica of some of the machines that we use in real life to allow me to interact with them, sort of if I want to be able to try and diagnose a problem or operate a machine or even have a digital assembly line. Those are things that we’re seeing in real life as well.

Even the ability to use the metaverse to repair things. We have an application called field service. There is a component of field service that makes use of guides, which is a mixed reality application where you can create a digital twin of an application to walk you through installing it or repairing it, or using remote assist, which is another application where we can pull someone in and both people would be able to use mixed reality markups to try and resolve a problem even though they might not both be in the same room. Those are some of the used cases that we see being the future of the metaverse. I think we have more practical value outside of just consumer use cased.

Topel: What do you really think happened? Did we move from metaverse moment to a generative AI moment?

Drayton: Generative AI moment, yes. [Laughter] It’s funny. When we first talked about this idea of talking about the metaverse I thought, “Hmm, we haven’t talked about the metaverse in a while.” That’s because a lot of what we’ve been talking about recently has been generative AI, ChatGPT, and all the variations of that. This is where a lot of our investments, a lot of our mindshare is. What the future of generative AI is going to look like, despite the fact that it’s actually younger, is a lot more assured because of the level of uptake that it’s had. So, because of that, we’ve been making a lot of investments into generative AI as a place where people are getting a lot of value very, very quickly from it. 

The metaverse itself is largely speculative in nature still, and it still feels a lot like people are hunting for just the right used case, whereas anybody can use generative AI to be able to compose an email or be able to create a spreadsheet just by describing in natural language what it looks like. Like who wouldn’t want to do something like this? I do not remember how to build a pivot table. I couldn’t if you paid me. So, the ability to then go to a generative AI model and say, “Hey, build this spreadsheet that’ll give me insights into all of this data,” and have it do it for you with no expertise on your part, who doesn’t want that?

So, that’s where a lot of what we’re looking at now is going to encompass a lot of our future investment. So, how that relates back to the metaverse, I think, is an interesting question. That probably remains to be seen. I think right now a lot of where we’re looking in making investment is going to be generative AI. That being said, there is a relationship between the two, and that is in the sense of both of them are kind of foundational models of what we think of as Web 3.

Topel: Other experts have said widespread adoption will probably take longer, maybe even much longer that we originally thought. They say mobile took basically 15 years to get to where are today. Do you think that sort of timetable, say 10 to 15 years, for widespread Web 3 and metaverse adoption makes sense?

Drayton: What I find is that the best consumer technology catches fire quickly. A lot of the slow-burn technologies that people often talk about never really materialized the way that people expect it. So, think all the way back to 1999 and the Segway, right? People, when the Segway first came out, there was a whole thing about, “Oh, it’s going to change the way people transport themselves. It’s going to be the end of cars as we know it.” It didn’t really work out that way. If you ever see Segways ever it’s usually in the form of tours, like little city tours on a Segway or something like that or periodically someone will go viral because they fell off the Segway. I think Segway itself, if you go to their website, it’s primarily scooters now. You don’t really see the manufacturing of that traditional Segway anymore. So, despite the fact that it was touted as being a game changer, because it never really caught fire right away, it never really achieved what people thought it would.

Same thing with Google Glass as an example. Google Glass is another one where they released it and people said, “Hmm,” and then a lot of pundits said, “Well, give it some time. It will take a little while.” It never really became what it was meant to, and now we can’t really buy a Google Glass anymore. So I think the best kinds of consumer technologies are the kinds that really catch fire right away. In contrast, ChatGPT. Cool. Immediate, right? So, it immediately became popular. It immediately became a game changer, and now everyone is using it.

Where exactly metaverse falls into that? Probably a little closer to the former than the latter when it comes to some of these use cases that we were talking about. That being said, there are a lot of people who are using metaverse platforms. So, going back to the first part of the question and that’s, what will it look like in 15 years, if you look at a lot of the power users, not the speculative users, who are doing things like making NFTs or buying digital real estate and things like that, but a lot of the genuine users, a lot of them are children. My nephew, Jackson, he is eight years old, and a lot of children are building these very sophisticated applications, these very sophisticated games and levels on it. So I think if we’re going to see that sort of mass uptake, it probably won’t be this generation. It’ll be his generation, because these are people who are going to be more digital natives to building things on a metaverse platform. So, 15 years, if it’s going to happen, seems right given some of the things that I’ve seen with a lot of younger people I work with.

Topel: Let’s start with what people are actually using the metaverse for today and how that could evolve based on those technologies?

Drayton: I’ve talked a little bit about this earlier when I mentioned that there are—there seem to be three main use cases emerging from the metaverse umbrella. One of them is gaming, one of them is going to be a lot of the digital financial speculation, and the third one is going to be more the B2B-types of use cases. So, when you look at gaming, that’s probably where you see most metaverse applications today. You see applications like Sandbox, Bloktopia, Decentraland, Roblox, and these are all applications that have hundreds of millions of users. So, it’s not nothing, and I think that’s where a lot of the forefront of metaverse development is taking place now, except it’s still far ways away from being mainstream. The use cases associated with them are far from being mainstream as well. So, I think it’s going to require some additional use cases that would then start grabbing in more of the mainstream people. Will that happen? I think it’s something that remains to be seen. That being said, we’re definitely seeing a lot of use cases within some of that gaming, some of the development, within that as well.

Now, going forward, I’m a big believer in Web 3 because a lot of Web 3 is focused on this idea of immersion, so immersive technology. So, I mentioned earlier where does generative AI fit into the whole metaverse thing? I think both the fact that they can become features of this Web 3 concept. So, in Web 3, we think about that as everything being decentralized. Everything being built on a blockchain, but then also everything being much more immersive in nature. You see rather than Web 1 and Web 2, where you adapted yourself to the technology, Web 3, one feature of it is, it adapts itself to you. It learns from you. It’s able to anticipate what you’re going to do and then be a helpful assistant.

So, in that sense, the metaverse is very much a Web 3 sort of technology. Blockchain is very much a Web 3 sort of technology, and I believe generative AI is a Web 3 technology as well, in the sense that now you’re going to see it embedded everywhere within the coming year, and the ability to really understand you and be able to provide a co-pilot for you for everything you do is going to be something that’s really the game changer, like the ability to basically automate everything that’s rote in your life, and it’ll allow you to focus on thinking about the future, thinking about what’s new. So, all of that is going to be something that can potentially be a real game changer going forward.

Topel: Obviously, there are already success stories in the metaverse and some sectors that seem poised for big changes. Let’s start with one that’s near and dear to your heart here, Charles. Healthcare.

Drayton: So, healthcare in the metaverse, or healthcare in Web 3, I think has a lot of promise. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One example for this is going to be the use of mixed reality in a lot of healthcare use cases. So, imagine this idea of having a surgeon who specializes in a specific type of procedure. This surgeon is in another country, but you can have a metaverse application where you can have him basically live from thousands of miles away being able to get a live feed into a surgery and essentially perform virtual surgery through a machine by wearing only a HoloLens. That’s one of the far further reaching examples, but we’ve already seen a lot of development to try and start bridging that gap between the virtual and the physical.

Another example that I think we’re seeing right now would be cases where you have traveling nurses and/or traveling healthcare workers. They have a HoloLens, and they connect via the HoloLens when they’re at a patient’s home or patients who have limited mobility or who are in healthcare deserts. Healthcare desert meaning you are more than at least 50 miles away from the nearest healthcare institution. There’s a fairly high percentage of the population that would fit into that definition of a healthcare desert. So, having someone come to them, connect via HoloLens to a primary care physician can essentially extend the reach of the primary care via the metaverse through mixed reality to a patient’s home.

So this way you see a patient and a traveling nurse essentially working together even though they are many miles apart at a patient’s home and then delivering healthcare or being able to get a real time feed of patient’s vitals that would then be visualized in the form of a mixed reality dashboard that then could be seen by both the nurse and the physician at the same time. That’s an example of something that we’re seeing in practice today. Going forward and through expanding the umbrella of this for metaverse to the broader concept of Web 3, I’m a big fan of the idea of having digital ownership of your own data.

For me, one of the most exciting promises of Web 3 is that communal ownership of data. Who owns your healthcare data right now? It’s not you. It should be you. As long as it’s not you, you’re always going to be at the mercy of other organizations. So, I’ve been an advocate for a long time of the idea that healthcare records should be the sole ownership of the patient and then the patient should be able to pick and choose what organizations they’re going to share it with. This way, if you need to get your health records, you don’t have to call this hospital or who did I see last year or who did I go to last year? Now, you get a copy of it.

So the idea of having that as a Web 3 application is also going to be something that’s really valuable, because it’ll make it easier at that point to say, “Okay. Here’s who I’m going to share my proprietary personal health information with and here’s who I’m going to take it away from. I’m going to have everything centralized that everything about myself and my health history is all centralized. It’s not in four or five, six different electronic health records that I all have to hunt down in all these different health organizations. It’s all mine and mine only.” That will make a lovely Web 3 application.

Those are all the things that I’m looking forward to. I know there are still discussions and a lot of debate over how it’s going to look and what this is going to look like, but when I think about the future and the most promising applications for metaverse and Web 3, those are definitely things that come to mind.

Topel: Thanks so much, Charles. You have sort of touched on this earlier, but I’ll ask it again this way. Ultimately, will the metaverse be a transformational game changer do you think or more of a niche space where some innovative things happen?

Drayton: I suppose a bit of both. There are going to be—I think that there are some niche use cases that exists today that I think are successful, but relatively small scale. A lot of the things with the HoloLens that I talked about they’re all things that exist today, but it’s not something that would be used by everyone in the US, but I also think that there’s a lot of promise for what’s to come as people start becoming more comfortable with metaverse or as the metaverse start becoming more comfortable itself. That is to say, as we start putting more of a definition on it, I think that sometimes it’s a little premature to go out and announce the metaverse to the world without really defining what it is. You ask the average person what the metaverse is, they’re going to say, “I don’t know. Something that Mark Zuckerberg does, VR or something like that.” [Laughter] So, no one can really even get it right. So, how can you sell it? How can you adopt it if no one really even knows what it is yet? So, where is it going to go? Let’s see what it becomes first and then we’ll see where it goes.

Topel: Thanks so much, Charles, for all your insights here today. I really appreciate all your thoughts and visions for the future. With that, I’ll turn it back over to you, Joe. 

Kornik: Thanks, Kathie, and thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. On behalf of Kathie Topel and Microsoft’s Charles Drayton, I’m Joe Kornik and we’ll see you next time.

New South Wales Chief Data Scientist on ways we’ll use the metaverse

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview, where we look at how big topics will impact global business over the next decade and beyond. Today, we’re talking about the metaverse. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, and I’m happy to welcome in today Dr. Ian Oppermann, the New South Wales Government’s chief data scientist working within the Department of Customer Service. He is an industry professor at the University of Technology Sydney, heads the government’s AI review committee, and is considered an expert on the digital economy. I’m happy to turn over the interviewing today to my Protiviti colleague, Ghislaine Entwisle, managing director and a leader in the technology consulting and business performance improvement practice at Protiviti. Ghislaine, let me turn it over to you to begin.

Ghislaine Entwisle: Thanks, Joe. Welcome again, Ian. It’s such a pleasure to spend some time with you again and ask some questions about the metaverse.

Ian Oppermann: Great to be here.

Entwisle: So, the metaverse has had its ups and downs over the last few years. It’s been everything from the next big thing to an overhyped gaming platform and anything in-between. Where do you stand on the metaverse, its potential and eventual impact?

Oppermann: Yes. Thanks, Ghislaine. It is really the question for today. The metaverse is being, as you said, described in a number of different ways, and the demonstrations and what’s being shown broadly looks a little bit game-y. It looks a little bit like Second Life. It looks a little bit like just a different way of interacting with the whole series of different sort of meeting environments or even actual game environments. The potential for the metaverse is what’s really exciting. The opportunity to engage with things in a digital space, to engage with digital versions of real things is actually quite important. The concept of building information models has been around for some time but the extension of those sorts of ideas, where you’ve got a digital equivalent of a physical asset that you can engage with, you can test, you can plan with, you can compare to a real object is where it starts to get interesting. It really gets interesting when we start to put valuable things into that digital environment.

So, when we start thinking about things like a digital driver’s license or a digital birth certificate and you can interact with that in a new and interesting and intuitive way and interact also with those digital equivalents of not only physical assets but digital equivalent of services, digital equivalent potentially even of rights, then we really start to talk about something interesting. So, I think we’re kind of on the on-ramp to something important but we’re just not there yet.

Entwisle: Yes. Given that, when do you envision the metaverse becoming mainstream? I mean, how far off do you think is that day and what do you think still has to happen before we can actually get there?

Oppermann: The metaverse will become mainstream when important things start to appear in the metaverse. I mentioned just a moment ago things like digital driver’s license or a digital birth certificate. At the moment, it still seems a little bit nonintuitive. Still, you have to accept that you’re going to go into a slightly cartoonish environment. Now, that doesn’t matter unless we’re expecting this to be a realistic 3D experience. People are prepared. I mean, we’re having a video call right at the moment. We accept that there is a loss of fidelity. We accept that there are some issues associated with it—a sort of two-dimensional projection of ourselves into each other’s space. A three-dimensional version of that, great. It takes a lot more computing. It takes a lot more bandwidth, but if we accept that that’s part of the experience then that’s all good.

The mainstream element of it is when I really need to or when it’s much more convenient for me to engage with this digital environment that it needs me to go to, a counter, or it is to call someone or it is to actually walk into a shop front. So, we still got quite a few things around what we’re willing to accept, how realistic it feels, how intuitive and how natural it feels, and a whole lot of people are just not going to be comfortable with hopping into a metaverse environment. The same sort of people who don’t have frequent flyer cards or who don’t have loyalty cards or who really struggle a little bit with the idea of digital engagement. So, there are few human, legal, technical and practical issues that we still have to deal with.

Entwisle: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we know it took several years for Web 1 and Web 2 to mature from a concept to reality and part of that was the maturation of the technology and, of course, the devices that enabled it. They kind of had to catch up with the end user. So, where do you think we’re at on that technology continuum when it comes to the metaverse and what are disruptors in the space as well?

Oppermann: Yes. The technological aspects of it, I think, still have some ways to go. At least everything I’ve seen still looks just a little bit like you're entering a Second Life scenario. So, the fidelity of a representation in a 3D environment, we either have to accept a lot more compute, a lot more bandwidth, really a lot more effort goes into realistic rendering, a further realistic rendering of you or a table or an object you interact with, or we accept it’s cartoonish or it’s a wireframe or it’s an avatar, which is just—it’s not quite realistic but we can accept that. We still got quite a long way to go in that space. When we all went online at the beginning of COVID back in 2020, we all accepted that anything was better than nothing. We all accepted that whatever we had was better than the reality of not being able to go to meetings or not being able to interact.

Over time, bandwidth has improved, network infrastructure has improved, processing power has improved, the reliability of network has also improved. Just those simple things, just the reliability aspect of everybody demanding more at the same time is a really big engineering undertaking. So, it’s not just what we have at home. It’s a whole lot of infrastructure that needs to come along. If you multiply that now by not just projecting an image of yourself but interacting with realistic and dense models in a digital environment, which really has to be processed somewhere, there’s a lot of digital infrastructure and engineering that still needs to be done in order to support that. So, we still got a way to go and the mainstream nature of it is really a nontrivial undertaking. To move from an experiment, which looks and feels good, to everybody doing it is really quite a dramatic shift.

Entwisle: Yes, absolutely. A long way to go, a great potential. So, what are you most excited about then when you think about the metaverse future? Where do you see the biggest potential impact and which sectors do you think will thrive and which industries or jobs may transform?

Oppermann: That’s a really good question. I mentioned earlier building information models and they really were revolutionary for the construction sector, not just for construction but for every phase in a building’s life cycle, from concept to planning, to detailed planning to construction, and then even to operation and maintenance. It’s true whether or not we’re talking about literally a building or whether we’re talking about a new rail line or any sort of major piece of infrastructure. The fidelity with which you can model and represent the digital twin of a piece of infrastructure or building is really quite remarkable. Standards have helped to create a deal in that space. The effort that goes into planning it once means that you can carry it all the through the life cycle of the asset, and as the asset changes in the real world, you can update your model with real information.

The richness of those models is really already quite amazing and it’s getting better all the time. The next big step though is when you’re not just interacting with the model of a physical object, but you’re interacting with a digital equivalent of something which you can interact with from a perspective of, where do all the parts of this building come from? What’s the provenance of all those pieces? In New South Wales, the building commissioner has developed a blockchain-based system to track where every component of a building has come from. So, the building itself is modeled but also the provenance of all the components is now modeled and that develops a trust index, specifically thinking about the potential for flammable aluminum cladding, but there’s also a lot of other ways you can think about how you would use the provenance of the components.

So, that’s a different way of engaging with that model. But imagine now that you’re fire rescue and you now have the provenance for all those different components and you want to assess the building for its fire-ready and fire risk. All of a sudden, you can interact with that model in a very, very different way from just thinking, “This is where the components are.” If you all then are thinking about how to optimize heating, ventilation and air conditioning, you can engage with that differently, but imagine this is now a Service New South Wales or a Service Victoria, or Service Australia Office, and you can access services from that digital environment, you would have the choice of, if you like that gamified way, interacting with that building and getting your service, getting your driver’s license, getting your—if you’re work with children, check renewed, or of course, you can just interact with that in a different digital way which doesn’t have that attempt to replicate the physical world but all of a sudden, you’re interacting with this model in a very different way. And it would potentially then carry your interaction, your service with details about your licenses and your rights and the things that you’re credentialed for, that can extend to any system, and it can extend to any process that happens in the real world, which is digitizable, can also be brought into the same space.

So, the potential is not just objects but interacting with those objects in very, very different ways, from that testing perspective, from that modeling perspective, but then all the services that wrap around that we traditionally think about needing to go somewhere for or the digital equivalency needing to go somewhere for, can all of a sudden start to come together in one place. If you’ve got things like driver’s licenses and if you’ve got things like identity and you’ve got things like digital birth certificate all in this space, appropriately, securely being interacted with, that creates such an incredible richness that it starts to become very compelling to say, “We can interact with the metaverse, which has systems, processes and objects embedded in the digital world.”

Entwisle: And that’s so exciting. Really, we want it to almost tomorrow with that level of excitement of the possibilities. So, with all that excitement, are there any concerns that you have or things that sort of give you pause for that future?

Oppermann: Well, whenever you bring lots of different data and digital services together you create a cyber security risk, and that’s something we have to take very, very seriously. So, if we build out a metaverse by bringing together the data and datasets and information about people and credentials and licenses and rights in a way that we would do it traditionally, we create a honeypot, then we create something which is really attractive for someone who wants access to that data. We create a cyber risk or cyber hazard. So, what we need to do is think differently about identity. We need to think differently about how we bring datasets together and there’s some really innovative thinking which is underpinning what’s behind the World Wide Web 3 model, Web 3.0 model, which says, “Don’t bring it all together. You keep your own data and you allow me, as the government, to ask questions with that data. I don’t need to see the whole data itself, but I can ask the question, ‘Are you old enough to go into this establishment? Do you have a valid, responsible service or alcohol license?’ rather than saying, ‘Show me your driver’s license? Tell me what your date of birth is.’” It’s just asking the question of the data without seeing the underlying data. That’s part of it.

There’s also a really important part about inclusion and accessibility. If we create a digital world which is not accessible or if create a digital world which is not inclusive, then we create a real digital barrier, a digital divide. So, there may be people who just don’t want to engage in a digital world, or there may be people who don’t feel comfortable engaged in a digital world or actually feel marginalized or excluded. One of the ideas early on was that in the metaverse, you can be whatever you want. You don’t have to be you. The avatar version of you could be a pirate if you want it, or you could have outrageous hair or outrageous clothes, but in practice, what we see is that people’s social norms get reflected in most digital environments we engage in. So, when we started doing Zoom early on in COVID, people have outrageous backgrounds, but they all kind of normalized to the point where it’s business professional or it’s appropriate social. Even in that simple little experiment, that equivalent could map into the metaverse very, very quickly. So, conservatism and some of the biases and some of the discriminatory behavior that we exhibit in the real word may just as well manifest in the metaverse. So, issues around people wanting to engage, issues about people feeling comfortable to engage, issues about people feeling that they belong in the metaverse or don’t not belong in the metaverse are human issues that we really need to think about, that they have little to do with technology and a lot more to do with social norms and social behaviors and describing what’s appropriate to do in the metaverse. So, we have a little way to go in terms of working up the rules of the game.

Entwisle: Yes. That makes sense. A few concerns to navigate along the way. Of course, security is always in the mix there as well as that diversity and inclusion element that is always so important. Lastly, as you look out to 2035, tell me what role the metaverse will play in our daily lives, our working lives, our personal lives? Will it be a better world in 2035 because of the metaverse?

Oppermann: I was with you until that last bit. I think by 2035, it will just be pervasive. So, we think nothing now of jumping on a Zoom call or a Teams call or whatever your favorite platform is. In fact, quite often, you have to check, is it an in-person meeting or is it an online meeting or is it a hybrid? So, this for example, this interaction is very, very comfortable. We’re very, very used to it and we think nothing of doing it. Whereas once upon a time, people really felt the need to come together. I think increasingly, this sort of engagement, an enriched version of this engagement, will just be ubiquitous. It will be everywhere. The infrastructure, the technology will all improve and it will be everywhere. And it will become increasingly normal to engage with really important interactions, the equivalent of online banking but taking into a more comprehensive environment. The equivalent of online gatherings will be just normal.

Will it be a better place? That’s a really, really good question, and some of that has to do with the rules of the game. So, we really need to understand the long-term implications of creating this digital environment, which is incredibly powerful that some people don’t want to access. And so that separation between what you can do if you're willing to engage versus what you’re not willing, or what you miss out on if you’re not willing to engage, is a really important one. We also need to understand really the implications of all the data that we’re effectively giving away about ourselves when we interact with this world. We reveal not only information about ourselves, we reveal information about where we are and when we are, who we’re talking to, what things we’re engaging with. So, all the issues we have at the moment around revealing personal information or personal identifiable information get scaled up massively when we have more and more ways of engaging at higher and higher velocity and with greater volume.

So, it’s the big data challenge turned inside out and amplified. The inside out part is we’re revealing so much about ourselves in so many ways and just put that on steroids, and that’s one of the other challenges. So, we need to think about what on earth we mean by privacy in, really, the hyperconnected version of the world we live in now. We’re already pretty connected but we can still turn it off if we think of enough ways, enough things to turn off, but if we’re really genuinely enmeshed with that digital universe, then we really have to rethink what we mean by privacy.

There are couple of other implications associated with it. What are the long-term consequences of just so much engagement with so many different entities and people and objects compared to how we have evolved to this point? Rewind back a hundred years, there was no such thing as even the conversation we’re having now. The best you could do is the very early telephone. I think we’re still running an experiment as the human race to see what the implications of constantly on, constantly accessible, and constantly connected really means to people.

By 2035, we probably would have sorted that out but we might have a better idea. We might have some new names for new conditions or new ways of dealing with not being connected, the anxiety of not being connected. But I think that experiment will still be running. So, will it be a better place? It will be more convenient. It will be more accessible. It will be more efficient in many, many different ways, but that’s not all we want as people, but certainly, it will help a whole range of different things that we do try to optimize and achieve.

Entwisle: Yes. That’s certainly very exciting, but as you say, we’ll wait and see how that actually shapes up, but great conversation today. Thank you again for the generosity of your time. Always a pleasure to speak to you, Dr. Ian Oppermann. Thank you.

Kornik: Thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. On behalf of Dr. Ian and Ghislaine, I’m Joe Kornik, and we’ll see you next time.

Physician on the metaverse: It will fundamentally change patient care

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our global content resource examining big themes that will impact the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide.

Today, we’re exploring healthcare in the metaverse. I’m excited to be joined today by Dr. Will Strimel, a physician, healthcare executive, and founder of Tulio Health and Wellness in Philadelphia. Specializing in cardiovascular disease and internal medicine, Dr. Strimel has a wealth of leadership experience serving for more than 15 years in the U.S. Army in various command positions and, subsequently, as the president of the physician enterprise for a large integrated healthcare system in Philadelphia.

Dr. Strimel, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Will Strimel: Thank you much. It’s a pleasure to be here.<>Kornik: Doctor, I mentioned that you currently lead a unique medical company. If you could tell us a little bit about Tulio Health and Wellness, its goals, and why you envision this model being part of healthcare’s future.

Dr. Strimel: Well, Joe, this is a really exciting time to be innovating in healthcare delivery in the United States and it’s because all the major stakeholders, from patients to clinicians to governments and payers, all recognize that the current system is just not sustainable. Costs are spiraling out of control, providers are burned out, and clinical outcomes for many people are actually getting worse, and it’s in large part due to the fact that we, rather than having a healthcare system, we really have more of a sick care system that’s designed to treat illness instead of engaging people before diseases start. At Tulio Health and Wellness, we’re changing that and we’re doing that by using advanced technology and testing, and then combining it with an experience that feels unique so that people are more engaged to optimize their health and delay the onset of illness. We spend much more of the healthcare dollar upstream, kind of protecting risks and trends before they develop, and then we partner with our clients to provide personalized solutions that really promote overall wellness.

Kornik: Thanks. Yes, you talked about technology there and I know telemedicine certainly has seen rapid uptake following the pandemic. As we move into a Web 3 world, do you see that momentum continuing in the metaverse? Is that the next iteration or evolution of healthcare?

Dr. Strimel: Yes, so telemedicine was a critical advancement during the pandemic but in many respects, it didn’t really change the delivery model all that much. Now, while we are now able to interact with patients in a way that feels a bit more personal by integrating video into a visit, in many respects, it’s just a glorified phone call. But the fact that there was such rapid adoption shows that there’s promise evolving this in the metaverse.

For instance, prior the pandemic, less than 50% of healthcare systems offered telemedicine services. By the end of 2020, that was up to 95%. And a patient visit in the metaverse can be so much more. By securely uploading biometric data and other information and time that with the way that we can interact with a patient in real time, it can be so much more than just a single data point in that visit. Then when you have a Web 3 platform, one that’s facilitated by haptics technology, where you can actually hear breath sounds or lung sounds or even perform a virtually exam that feels very much like a person is in front of you, that can really change the delivery model.

Kornik: Right, Doctor, and I know that you’re probably familiar with the metaverse hype cycles that we’ve had the last few years. Coming out of the pandemic, it has been on, it has been off. There has been a lot of news. Metaverse certainly has been in the news a bit, and healthcare is certainly one of those industries and one of those sectors that I keep hearing will be fundamentally changed by technology, Web 3 in the metaverse. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. Do you think the metaverse will be a revolutionary gamechanger in healthcare, or do you think we’re getting a little bit too far ahead of ourselves there?

Dr. Strimel: Well, I do think that the healthcare delivery system will look very different as the concept of the metaverse evolves, but I suspect the further out on the value chain that you look, and what I mean is by that ending directly at the care of the patient, I think it’s going to be harder for that change to come. Of course, there’s going to be an iterative nature to it, but I believe that healthcare is more likely to see periods of big advances and then plateaus for a while instead of, for instance, a straight line up into the right in terms of innovation.

When you look at companies like Amazon and Netflix, they were able to radically disrupt their markets on the [backs of] technology because they really created whole new methods of delivery for their products, filling somewhat of a white space. Now that we have others in the market trying to follow their lead, but given the nature of healthcare services, it’s going to be extremely difficult or really impossible for any one entity to become that true dominant developer. I think we’re more likely to see a lot of competing technologies at different adoption rates.

Now, when one of these breaks through, I think you could have the ability to see mass adoption but it’s going to take time. I think a good example of this is electronic medical records. They’ve been really around since the early 1990s and while 30 years later, almost all health systems and providers use electronic medical records, there still are tremendous challenges in terms of interoperability, cost, security, and really ownership of the data.

Kornik: Right, and when you talk about the potential, the possibilities, it just seems like they’re almost limitless when I think about the space. What excites you the most when you start thinking about a metaverse future?

Dr. Strimel: Well, I’ll tell you, Joe. As someone who remains connected to the care of the patient, I am extremely excited about the possibility of linking generative AI with biometric data in real time. If you think about it, it has been estimated that it takes approximately 17 years for medical research to become fully integrated into clinical practice. Generative AI has the ability to shorten that to months, if not sooner, and that’s even at a population level.

For instance, when we take that capability and then we integrate a patient’s current biometric data, layer that perhaps even with genetic information, we’re going to be able to apply the most up-to-date treatments more precisely and at lower risk than we ever imagined. I think that once physicians experience this and develop a comfort level around this, they’re really going to demand it.

I think the other thing that’s interesting is the way that we’ll be able to redefine the way healthcare is acquired, stored, applied and controlled. This is where the blockchain really becomes extremely important. It can actually flip the script on healthcare information because up until now, it has really been either the government or the payers or the health systems that have had control of your healthcare information. On the blockchain, securely stored, you can now control that and you can move it and use it in a way that’s going to be way more meaningful to your care that it has ever been in the past.

Kornik: Well, I would say like it would solve one of the big impediments to adoption which I’ve been hearing a lot about which is privacy and security, and I know that’s a big issue. You think blockchain is the key to unlocking that particular set of [solutions to] problems?

Dr. Strimel: Well, I think we’ve already demonstrated that we can store the data there. I think the big question is going to be interoperability, so are we able to create a system that allows seamless flow? Right now, we don’t have one. We have electronic medical records to store a wealth of information but it’s not readily usable. I think that’s where a lot of startup companies are really starting to work at, how can we create almost a digital wallet for your healthcare information that you can control?

Kornik: Right, and that’s happening in many other places on the metaverse as well, that digital wallet that travels with you and secures assets in a secure environment. Wow, a lot of exciting opportunities here. I feel like another area that could see significant change is the ability to train and even, I guess, perform remote surgeries in the metaverse because of digital twinning. I’ve read about this. Obviously, you would know much better than I its potential. How do you see that moving forward? How could that improve patient care?

Dr. Strimel: Sure. Well, this is already becoming a reality. In fact, in June 2020, neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins performed the very first augmented reality surgeries, and in both of these cases, they were performed using headsets with see-through displays that had images of the patient’s anatomy that were acquired by CAT scanning projected onto them that facilitated the procedures. It’s also important to remember that the healthcare practitioners tomorrow literally grew up with technology, so not only are they going to adapt well to an educational experience that’s immersed in technology, they’re going to seek it out.

Finally, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of creating more realistic training, especially procedural specialties. The classic model requires live patients for future physicians and proceduralists to learn their craft. This, unfortunately, exposes people to risk and it takes a lot of time to get the number of cases you need to become proficient. Well, in the metaverse-based training environment, using realistic models of both diseased and healthy patients, we can theoretically speed up the time to train future clinicians and doing it with much less risk, producing more doctors in less time.

Kornik: That’s interesting. Thank you, Doctor, for your time. You’ve been very generous with it. I have just one more question. We call this initiative VISION by Protiviti because we like to look ahead and envision just what’s possible. If you could take me out a decade or even more and tell me how the metaverse has transformed healthcare, let’s say by 2035, what’s different a decade from now?

Dr. Strimel: Sure. Well, I think the healthcare will definitely be different based upon innovations in the metaverse, but I do think it’s going to be slower than other industries. I think it’s important to identify the real-world challenges that are somewhat unique to healthcare, and chief among them is legislation. Healthcare is one of, if not the most heavily regulated industry, and legislation takes time to catch up with the ability of our tools. That’s one big area that people are going to need to have foresight and be proactive and seeing these changes coming out of where they work, whether state and local governments.

As I mentioned, there’s going to be no clear leader as far as the innovation. There’s going to be a lot of competing technologies and given the influence the governments play in financing healthcare, there’s going to be a little bit of a struggle with market forces to really drive the innovation. My ability in insurance reform and to make sure that we can keep people safe while this new type of care is delivered is important. Also importantly, access to this technology, whether it be high-speed networks or computing devices. For the people who are really going to benefit from this care the most, that’s just going to take a long time for that to become a reality.

With that said, I think within 10 years, we will see significant changes probably further up that value stream that I referenced, so things like drug creation delivery, training both for medical education and in real-world environments to make systems safer and more efficient. Generative AI with imaging, we’re already seeing this where you can use AI to improve the diagnostic accuracy of things like chest x-rays, CAT scans, EKGs. I do think we’ll see rapid evolution of what’s possible in the blockchain in terms of healthcare data and probably in terms of actual delivery, I think we’ll see much of mental health services start to move in this direction both because of the significant need and the significant barriers that already exist in this care right now.

Kornik: Thank you so much for the fascinating conversation today, Dr. Strimel. Thanks for your time.

Dr. Strimel: It has been a real pleasure, Joe.

Kornik: Thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. On behalf of Dr. Strimel, I’m Joe Kornik. We’ll see you next time.