Psychological Underpinnings of Trust and Privacy Perception in the Medical Metaverse

The idea of a medical metaverse highlights the ways that immersive technologies will provide direct experiential access to the future of digital medicine, enabling clinical interactions, therapeutic treatment, and access to educational and support resources in persistent, multi-user, immersive digital environments. There are several points of tension, however, between the need for trust and privacy in the medical context and established norms and capabilities of the digital platforms on which health care is expected to increasingly take place. Considering trust and privacy experiences though a psychological lens, focused on tendencies, norms, and expectancies within digital environments can be instructive in considering these challenges. Here, the interface between human psychology and visions for the medical metaverse are discussed in the context of the environment, the self, interpersonal interactions, and group dynamics. Incorporating well-established psychological principles into user-centric design of future medical metaverse applications can enable us to take full advantage of emerging technological capabilities while building our digital interface with the future of medicine that is psychologically and ethically sound.