Building Socioemotional Environments in Metaverses for Virtual Teams in Healthcare: A Conceptual Exploration

摘要

Metaverses are 3-dimentional (3D) virtual environments that allow people to interact with each other through software agents without physical limitations. There is great interest in the use of Metaverses for health and medical education. This paper examines the application of metaverses for supporting effective collaboration and knowledge sharing in virtual teams. Virtual teams have been used in health/medical area, such as home healthcare. However, the management of virtual teams is challenging. This study proposes that metaverses have the potential to provide socioemotional environments where individuals socially interact with others. Such socioemotional environments have the potential to facilitate effective collaboration and knowledge sharing in virtual teams. Building on previous research, we developed a conceptual model for understanding how metaverses enable the development of social-emotional environments in virtual teams.