Metaverse Health

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health features Second Life

The ever-growing number of health-related projects occurring in virtual worlds continues to seep through to the academic literature. On the 18th December, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an article titled Web 3D for Public, Environmental and Occupational Health: Early Examples from Second Life. The abstract: Over the ...

Student British Medical Journal gets the virtual worlds picture

The December Student BMJ has an excellent overview of the growing use of Second Life for medical simulation. The collaborative and immersive meetings aspects are also covered and although the article is pitched at non-virtual world users, it provides a balanced summary of goings-on to date. A big thanks to Mal ...

The View From My Wheelchair

Australian Second Life resident, Seshat Czeret, provides a guest post, which appeared on The Metaverse Journal in the past week. Thanks Seshat! There is always a lot of talk about 'accessibility', so-called 'making things usable for the disabled'. You also hear a lot about phrases like 'discrimination', 'equal opportunity' ...

A follow-up on World AIDS Day in Second Life

On the Linden Lab blog, Pathfinder Linden has written on the successful World AIDS Day initiative in Second Life, run by the Karuna organisation. He's coined the phrase 'Ecosystems of Support' and it's very fitting for initatives like this. Over the past six months, there's been a significant momentum build in ...

A better system? Teaching healthcare virtually

Rather than assessing their students through a paper-based examination, or even by having real, live people come in to pretend to be patients, it is starting to become more common to hear of healthcare educators asking their students instead to use computer applications and tools featuring digitally-created ...

Faster Cures

Machinima guru Draxtor Depres has created an excellent piece on the entry of a new health non--profit into Second Life. In Draxtor's words: Faster Cures is a self-described action tank, focused on changing the culture of medical research. They recently entered Second Life, planning to use its potential to the fullest. ...

Body image and virtual worlds

In the past week, the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research released its second issue, and one article that caught my eye from a health viewpoint is a research paper titled: Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night: The Influence of Body Image on the Use of Virtual Worlds The intent ...

Linden Lab mainland advertising ban kicks in

Linden Lab have provided an update on their recent clamp down on mainland advertising in Second Life. Now that we're seeing less advertising, is it time for some social behaviour change? Would it hurt to have some positive health messages advertised around the grid? I'd love to hear your thought - ...

The rise and rise of the Game Widow

This article in the Canadian publication, the London Free Press, describes in detail a couple of case studies of gaming addicts. The case studies themselves paint a fairly standard picture of someone with a compulsion for intensive gaming, though some effort has been made to provide balanced coverage of the ...

World AIDS Day in Second Life

There's another new health project in development in Second Life - Karuna. It's The focus is 'HIV / AIDS education, outreach and support' and it's scheduled for launch on December 1st, World AIDS Day. Partners in the project include AIDS.gov and the University of North Carolina Center for AIDS research, Community ...