The metaverse integrates physical and virtual realities, enabling humans and their avatars to interact in an environment supported by technologies such as high-speed internet, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed and extended reality, blockchain, digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI), all enriched by effectively unlimited data. The metaverse recently emerged as social media and entertainment platforms, but extension to healthcare could have a profound impact on clinical practice and human health. As a group of academic, industrial, clinical and regulatory researchers, we identify unique opportunities for metaverse approaches in the healthcare domain. A metaverse of ‘medical technology and AI’ (MeTAI) can facilitate the development, prototyping, evaluation, regulation, translation and refinement of AI-based medical practice, especially medical imaging-guided diagnosis and therapy. Here, we present metaverse use cases, including virtual comparative scanning, raw data sharing, augmented regulatory science and metaversed medical intervention. We discuss relevant issues on the ecosystem of the MeTAI metaverse including privacy, security and disparity. We also identify specific action items for coordinated efforts to build the MeTAI metaverse for improved healthcare quality, accessibility, cost-effectiveness and patient satisfaction.

元宇宙整合了物理和虚拟现实，使人类及其化身能够在高速互联网、虚拟现实、增强现实、混合和扩展现实、区块链、数字孪生和人工智能（AI）等技术支持的环境中进行交互，所有这些都通过有效的无限数据得到丰富。虚拟宇宙最近作为社交媒体和娱乐平台出现，但扩展到医疗保健领域可能会对临床实践和人类健康产生深远影响。作为一群学术、工业、临床和监管研究人员，我们在医疗保健领域发现了元宇宙方法的独特机会。“医疗技术和人工智能”（MeTAI）的元宇宙可以促进基于人工智能的医疗实践，特别是医学影像引导的诊断和治疗的开发、原型设计、评估、监管、转化和完善。在这里，我们介绍元界用例，包括虚拟比较扫描、原始数据共享、增强监管科学和元界医疗干预。我们讨论 MeTAI 元宇宙生态系统的相关问题，包括隐私、安全和差异性。我们还确定了协调努力构建 MeTAI 元宇宙的具体行动项目，以提高医疗质量、可及性、成本效益和患者满意度。