Mr. Hinrichs will take us to the next level of where 3D technology is leading us. He will lead the discussion evolving our instant access of information, through rapid collaboration, to global co-creation of innovative services and rapidly responding communities to communities of expertise transaction on any device in any location instantly. He will discuss the emergence of the avatar as a citizen, and how we can come to rely on expanding access to experts in-world, including the impact on in-world digital IP management, technology adoption, and e-culture adaptation.

The University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies is developing SimCoach, a semi-immersive, online, interactive virtual support program where users can be guided by a virtual human agent. SimCoach is a web portal to mental health information, resources, and advice that aims to break down barriers to care. The virtual human is being developed with the primary goal of engaging those warfighters, and their families, who might not otherwise seek help for psychological and/or emotional conditions.

The value of virtual reality-based training has been proven in recent years. It has been used in everything from training airline pilots and emergency workers to treating phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders. This paper will describe three projects undertaken in Second Life: the use of virtual reality to simulate auditory and visual hallucinations suffered by patients with schizophrenia, a pilot bioterrorism-defense virtual training environment and inworld teaching seminars for graduate health informatics students.