CVS prepares to enter the metaverse: Now what?
The pharmacy filed trademarks to sell virtual goods and NFTs, as well as provide healthcare services, but are consumers ready?
If you’re wondering what health care might look like in the metaverse, keep an eye on CVS Health. On Feb. 28, the pharmacy giant became the first major drug chain to file with the U.S. Patent Trade Office to trademark its logo, offer an online store, and provide such downloadable virtual goods — more commonly known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — as “prescription drugs, health, wellness, beauty, and personal products,” according to CNBC.com.
The company also intends to bring in-store and telehealth services to a virtual setting, including “health care services provided in virtual reality and augmented reality environments, namely non-emergency medical treatment services, wellness programs, advisory services relating to nutrition, providing health lifestyle nutrition services … and counseling.”
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“We’re… regularly looking at new and innovative ways to engage consumers through a digital-first, technology-forward approach,” a CVS spokesperson told CNBC. “We will continue to explore these and other options to improve the consumer experience and launch new consumer-centric services.”
The big question is whether consumers are ready for those new services.
“All these Fortune 500 companies are making trademark filing with the idea of ‘How are we going to play on this platform?’” trademark attorney Josh Gerben, founding partner of Gerben Perrott, a law firm based in Washington, D.C., told CNBC. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything in the last couple of months that’s been like this CVS filing as a virtual healthcare clinic.”
What is the metaverse, anyway?
The term “metaverse” entered the mainstream when Facebook rebranded itself “Meta” in October 2021, but the concept is not new. It is, however, generating interest among certain segments of the population. Bloomberg.com predicts that the metaverse could be an $800 billion market by 2024, propelled in large part by online video games and social networks.
As The New York Times explained in January, “[t]he metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life. .. .The metaverse appears to have gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic. The term today refers to a variety of experiences, environments, and assets that exist in the virtual space. Video games in which players can build their own worlds have metaverse tendencies, as does most social media. If you own a non-fungible token, virtual-reality headset or some cryptocurrency, you’re also part of the metaversal experience.
“It’s moving into what people call ambient computing,” Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the metaverse, told The Times. “It’s about being within the computer rather than accessing the computer. It’s about being always online rather than always having access to an online world.”
In other words, as Times reporter Brian X. Chen put it: “It’s you and your avatar interacting with others in a digital environment.”
If all of this is hard to wrap your head around, you’re not alone. A recent survey by email and SMS platform Klaviyo indicates that many consumers have no idea what the metaverse is — including 41% of respondents between ages 18 and 24, 34% of those between ages 25-34, and 61% of those age 55 and older.
Where does health care fit in?
A lack of understanding or even knowledge of the metaverse hasn’t stopped major companies such as Walmart, Nike, Wrangler, and the restaurant chain Wingstop from filing trademarks for NFT-related ventures, though.
The health care industry is part of the gathering momentum in the metaverse space, too, with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and artificial intelligence (AI) all playing a role. As a recent white paper issued by Fount Investment Company Limited notes, AR and VR technology already is “extensively” used in medical training, including surgical procedures and COVID response training, as well as in designing operating rooms.
“Although metaverse technologies are not completely built out, its elements are proving to be undoubtedly advantageous in the medical field,” Bong-Geun Choi, Fount Investment’s chief economist said in the white paper, which is titled “Is the Metaverse the New Frontier for Healthcare?” “We expect metaverse technologies to advance medical training and procedures and improve overall patient care.”
How CVS and other drug companies will fit into the metaverse also remains to be seen, but CVS is being hailed as a pioneer in this area.
Simply filing for a trademark “does not necessarily mean [CVS] will dive directly into the NFT and metaverse world,” wrote Godfrey Benjamin on Blockchain.News. “However, should the trademark applications be granted, CVS Pharmacy will rank amongst the first few companies that recognize the power and innovative potential of the metaverse, helping to shape its inherent mainstream adoption.”
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