Immersive Tech Symposium
Immersive Education in the SGXverse – Foundations of Serious Games, Extended Reality and the Metaverse in Healthcare

Date: 22 Sep 2023, Friday | Time: 1025 - 1155 | Track Type: Symposium | Venue: Whitespace, Level 2, Academia 

Imagine it is the year 2030… The internet that you know of has now been upgraded to another version – the Metaverse. The normal way in which people surf this new version of the internet is by navigating the virtual world through a more sophisticated form of their own avatars – digital humans. You do online shopping at digital marketplaces and connect with your family, friends and colleagues through a more advanced form of social media combining a mixed reality form of Zoom in the Metaverse. As a medical/healthcare professional, you can pull up three-dimensional images of patient’s scans, tele-collaborate with your multidisciplinary team and discuss about diagnosis and treatment plans of your patients using the patient’s digital twin in their Metaverse Health Record. Parents of the Gen Zs and the Generation Alphas – imagine your children playing games and attending social/entertainment events in virtual worlds, such as Minecraft and Fortnite.

Impossible, you say? As the world starts to embrace this digital shift in the post-COVID era, we may not necessarily be that far off in the future. Many healthcare professionals are already exploring various immersive technologies, such as extended reality (XR), serious games (SG), artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse (i.e. SGXverse) for clinical practice and healthcare education. However, many are navigating the SGXverse blindly, creating confusion and miscommunications with game designers, technical developers, and vendors. We need for a new breed of healthcare practitioners who are passionate and interdisciplinary in clinical knowledge, educational pedagogies, and technological skills to navigate the SGXverse in a more structured manner.

This symposium aims to help the audience grasp the core concepts of immersive technologies, such as serious games, extended reality and the metaverse ecosystem; as well as develop a deeper understanding on how to navigate the SGXverse for their healthcare practices and education.

TOPIC 1:

Enter the SGXverse: A Multiverse of Immersive Technologies

Speaker: Dr Kevin Yap

TOPIC 2:

Tinkering with Serious Games: Age of Design Thinking

Speaker: Dr Bina Rai