Editor's Note: In 2022, Dr. Chunxue Bai from Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, introduced the concept of "Metaverse Medicine," aiming to leverage metaverse technology to revolutionize disease prevention and treatment. At the 2024 International Lung Cancer Academic Conference, Professor Bai presented a report titled "Lung Cancer Screening and Management in the Metaverse Era." This article provides a summary of the main points of his report.Why Lung Cancer Screening and Management Need the Empowerment of Metaverse Medicine
Lung cancer cases in China have surpassed 1.06 million annually, highlighting the urgent need for new technological platforms to enhance diagnosis, treatment, and management. Currently, several issues persist in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer, such as the prevalence of overtreatment due to limited expertise, delayed diagnoses causing greater harm to patients, and inaccuracies in lung nodule removal.
Lung cancer screening plays a vital role in improving early diagnosis and treatment. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology can assist in differentiating between benign and malignant lung nodules, providing valuable support for clinical diagnosis. Expert clinicians can utilize AI for precise screening and management of lung nodules. The human-machine multidisciplinary team (MDT) approach employed at Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, has successfully diagnosed early-stage lung cancer cases that were unresolved in both domestic and international consultations.
In 2018, Dr. Chunxue Bai’s team innovatively proposed the concept of “Internet of Things (IoT) Medicine,” establishing a mobile-based IoT disease management platform to standardize and enhance the quality of diagnosis and treatment. However, IoT and AI still face unresolved challenges, such as centralized data that cannot be shared, the inability to provide real-time remote guidance from cloud experts to frontline physicians, and limitations in extending medical coverage to grassroots levels due to the continued reliance on artisanal training methods. To address these challenges, Professor Bai further developed IoT Medicine into the “Metaverse in Medicine” theory, which offers the potential to overcome these issues.
Integrating Industry 4.0 Principles into Metaverse Medicine
Professor Bai’s team incorporated advancements from Industry 4.0 into Metaverse Medicine, empowering new forms of medical productivity. Specifically, this approach includes:
- 5A Program as an Engine: The PNaPP5A system simplifies artisanal approaches into standardized, streamlined processes.
- Four Key Elements: Complex problems are simplified, simple problems are digitized, digital problems are programmed, and programmed problems are systematized.
- IoT Integrated with the Metaverse: Perception, transmission, and intelligent processing are integrated with AR/VR/XR/MR and digital humans.
- Empowering Physicians for Public Health: IoT presents new health opportunities, brings renowned experts closer to the public, and facilitates meaningful virtual and real-world interactions, serving as a booster for the public’s well-being.
Keeping pace with advancements, Professor Bai’s team has expanded Medical IoT (MioT) into a digitized medical system. In 2018, they initiated global multicenter AR-assisted IoT Medicine clinical research (the embryonic form of “Metaverse Medicine”). In February 2022, they held the first Metaverse Medicine Conference in Shanghai, where they established the International Association for Metaverse Medicine (IAMM). To lead the way in creating new medical productivity, the world’s first “Metaverse Medicine” book was published in 2022, along with a million-word professional monograph on “Metaverse Medicine.” In 2022, “Clinical eHealth” was designated as the official journal, and in 2024, the world’s first Chinese-language “Metaverse Medicine” journal was launched as IAMM’s official Chinese publication. These journals serve as vital resources for developing Metaverse Medicine.
Metaverse Medicine Empowering Lung Cancer Screening and Management
Professor Bai summarized the top-level design of Metaverse Medicine with a concise verse: “IoT presents new health opportunities, renowned experts are close at hand, virtual-real interaction enhances quality control, human-machine integration is unbeatable.” In his report, he outlined the goals and scope of Metaverse Medicine’s design and its empowering capabilities, focusing on tasks that “other models cannot do, do not do well, or can most benefit the public.”
Integration of Virtual and Real: Metaverse Medicine aims to empower experts, amplify the impact of renowned physicians, and bring virtual healthcare into the real world for interactive treatment.
Empowering the Million Early Lung Cancer Project: The China Lung Cancer Prevention Alliance has launched the “Intelligent Million Early Lung Cancer Project,” referred to as the “Million Project.” This initiative aims to train regional talent and better utilize AI to assist in the early diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. It also plans to establish “Metaverse Lung Nodule Diagnosis and Treatment Sub-centers” as part of the “Double Hundred Project,” intending to set up sub-centers in 100 hospitals within three years and treat one million early-stage lung cancer patients within ten years. The ultimate goal is to improve the five-year survival rate of lung cancer to a ten-year survival rate, achieving the vision of “renowned doctors preventing disease, Metaverse Medicine benefiting the public.”
Empowering Screening and Management of Various Diseases: Regarding the secondary prevention of lung cancer, the sharp rise and fall in lung cancer incidence and mortality in China from 2021 to 2022 suggests that secondary prevention has played a crucial role. Metaverse Medicine has identified more early-stage lung cancer cases that had previously gone undetected, enhancing grassroots coverage and improving lung cancer prevention and treatment outcomes.
OSA Diagnosis and Management Model: Metaverse Medicine is also being applied to sleep management, with related research data soon to be released.
Summary
The epidemiological characteristics of lung cancer in China—”two highs and one low”—make it the most severe burden on public health. The most effective way to improve lung cancer survival rates is through screening, early diagnosis, and early treatment. However, the current artisanal screening and management methods are prone to errors, necessitating the widespread adoption of PNaPP5A, human-machine MDT, and Metaverse Medicine to enhance standardized screening and management levels across diseases, ultimately realizing the vision of “renowned doctors preventing disease, Metaverse Medicine benefiting the public.”
Dr. Chunxue Bai
- Lifetime Honorary Professor at Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center
- Director of the Shanghai Respiratory Disease Research Institute
- Chairman of the China Lung Cancer Prevention Alliance
- President of the International Association for Metaverse Medicine (IAMM)
- President of the Shanghai Anti-Smoking Association
- Editor-in-Chief of Clinical eHealth and Metaverse Medicine
- Editor-in-Chief of the Respiratory Section of Frontiers in Medicine and editorial board member of AJRCCM and other journals
- Recipient of major, key, and general support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, leading 30 domestic and international consensus guidelines, including the Asia-Pacific Lung Nodule Guidelines
- Holder of 50 approved patents, developer of the world’s first GPT for digital human medicine (with seven registered trademarks) and the HZ lung nodule and OSA assessment and management machine
- Author of 700 publications, including 320 SCI papers with an IF>1700, cited over 20,000 times with an h-index of 55
- Author/editor of 12 Chinese and English professional books, including The Future Is Here – The Metaverse Medicine We Need, IoT Medicine, Modern Respiratory Diseases, and Health 4.0.
