Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital

On 18 October, Hallym University Medical Center (HUMC) received the Minister of Science and ICT Awards, the best prize at the ‘2023 Korea Metaverse Awards.’

The Korea Metaverse Awards is the exclusive contest in metaverse industry in Korea hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT). The contest has been held since 2021 to expand the base of the domestic metaverse industry by encouraging companies, creators, and contents performance that contributed to the development of the metaverse ecosystem.

HUMC received rave reviews for expanding the base of metaverse by establishing various spaces including virtual hospitals and laboratories, and operating programs through a metaverse-based platform. In particular, HUMC won the award in recognition of its contribution to improving the quality of life for patients by minimizing inconvenience caused by temporal and spatial constraints.

In December 2021, HUMC established the Metaverse Children's Burn Hospital to reduce physical environmental constraints between the patients and the medical staffs. Since then, HUMC setup the systematic metaverse services such as ‘the Metaverse Love Sharing Bazaar,’ ‘the Medical Imaging Experience Center,’ ‘the Infection Control Center,’ ‘Hallym Universe Metaverse Festival’ and ‘the Birth Class.’ The Metaverse Love Sharing Bazaar is Korea's first non-face-to-face donation activity. The Medical Imaging Experience Center is a center where patients can experience tests in advance at a virtual hospital. The Infection Control Center is a center which allows training to respond to infectious diseases without spatial constraints. Hallym Universe Metaverse Festival is the largest event in the medical community for the harmony of the medical staffs and the faculty members. The Birth Class is a class for married immigrant women from multicultural families.

In addition, HUMC held the 2022 Hallym Universe Metaverse Festival to harmonize its faculty and staff members. By utilizing the metaverse platform, Ditoland, HUMC made some virtual spaces of its five hospitals, the Hallym University Ilsong Memorial Library, and the grand stadium. The participants enjoyed various programs such as watching the medical center's historical contents, team play games, and lottery event at each place. As the largest event in the medical field, the 2022 Hallym Universe Metaverse Festival was successfully finished with around 6,000 faculty members.

So far, the HUMC metaverse service users have exceeded 10,000 users. HUMC aims to lead the use of metaverse in the medical field by launching future infectious diseases response systems and trauma treatment programs through metaverse.

Hee-Sung Yoon, the executive director of HUMC, said, "Our medical center will continue to use the metaverse not only to provide more convenient medical services to patients and their guardians, but also to innovate hospital operation system." He also added, "We plan to promote healthcare services such as education and counseling that can create practical and new values based on smart hospital systems including AI, VR, Digital Twin, and NFT and simulation centers in the virtual world."