Massively

Two hospitals opened up in Second Life today. Except only one actually did any opening. IBM's Virtual Health Center actually isn't open to the public. Rumors of its opening seem to be greatly exaggerated, and are largely confined to the press-release and coverage by folks who didn't actually try to visit it. We've asked IBM what's up with that, and we're waiting for an answer - so we can't even show you a picture of the place.

So, the more interesting hospital (ie: the one we could actually look at) comes to us courtesy of Cisco, Palomar Pomerado Health, and metaverse developers Millions-of-us. The design of the hospital is exceptionally modern, and the Second Life version of the hospital is - essentially - a model of the physical campus that will be built (by the year 2011) in San Diego, California, all packed with top-of-the-line, medical-grade Cisco technology.

Palomar West hospital has its own Second Life account registration portal, and a video tour. On the whole, the campus is very pretty. It's as 21st century as you could hope to see, without flying cars.