Top Ten Virtual Medical Sites in SecondLife
I’ve been keeping an interested eye on what is going on in the world of SecondLife as it relates to health care.
One of the benefits of using SL is that everyone can download the software and run it on their own machines which seems like a great way to reach many people. But, that being said, I’m still on the fence as to whether I would recommend using it for a health care project. Beyond the investment in a technology that may go away in a few years, there are some barriers to entry for the average user:
- The learning curve in SecondLife is steep - just moving around in the environment with some control is difficult initially, even for a sophisticated user. A lot of people get frustrated with the GUI and give up
- The software requires a newer computer with plenty of horsepower to render the graphics effectively
- If the Linde servers are down for some reason, your SL project is also down, which means you lose touch with your visitors and constituents in SL
All that being said, many health care organizations are jumping into the virtual space and using SL as a medium for demonstration, experiment design, collaborative meeting spaces, training and even actual experiments, to name but a few.
This top-ten list of virtual health care spaces, while not exhaustive (number 9 is a little strange) provides an interesting glimpse into some of the SecondLife projects under development by those in our industry.