IBM has unveiled a "Virtual Healthcare Island" in Second Life, intended to support its strategic vision for healthcare it released in 2006. The island itself is intended as a 3D representation of the issues and challenges facing the industry unveiled in that paper, hoping to highlight the role information technology will play.

The project was designed and built by a team from IBM India with support from U.S. project leads, and offers an interactive demo of the company's Health Information Exchange architecture.

In the interactive experience, avatars create their personal health records and watch it incorporate into electronic medical record systems accessible at various medical facilities. Users can then navigate among the different island stations to see how their electronic health records are used in a network that can only be accessed by authorized health systems and family members.

Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry, commented, "We are pleased to offer our IBM Virtual Health Island as a tool for our healthcare customers and our worldwide sales force. The island allows each healthcare stakeholder to envision how the total system can be affected by intercession at each juncture of the healthcare delivery process. We believe that the use of our new virtual world provides an important, next-generation Internet-based resource to show how standards; business planning; the use of a secured, extensible and expandable architecture; HIE interoperability; and data use for healthcare analytics, quality, wellness and disease management are all helping to transform our industry."