November 10, 2006
Medical simulator goes more high-tech
The latest medical simulation equipment has the look and feel of the video games many of the young medical staff played in arcades when they were teenagers.
Computer screens are filled with characters in medical garb and people on stretchers wheeling through hallways and into equipment-stocked rooms. The images talk to each other and collaborate on problems.
But this is not a game. This is a vitrual-reality learning platform developed by
Claudia Johnston, PhD, associate vice president for special projects at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Five years ago, she was walking through a big-box electronics store and stopped to play a first-person shooter video game running on a floor-model TV. She had never played one before. She immediately realized that the experience of playing high-tension games like Half-Life or Doom was similar to that of navigating multiple challenges in a chaotic hospital setting.
A&M and Maryland commercial game developer Break Away Ltd. are working on what they hope will become a state-of-the-art tool for teaching medical students, doctors and nurses how to recognize conditions and respond. "Pulse", as it is called, is being supported through the Office of Naval Research, which has put $10 million into the project.
Medical schools increasingly are turning to computer simulation and virtual reality to go beyond the pages of standard medical textbooks. The University of Texas Health Science Center, for example, teaches anatomy with three-dimensional computer programs that visualize parts of the body. Dental students simulate office emergencies on an unconscious "virtual patient" who "dies" if they don't figure out how to revive him within four minutes.
The Pulse project pushes the technology further through a virtual patient named Sam who can be programmed to simulate just about any condition in the medical books — from acute appendicitis to major trauma from an improvised explosive device.
The new "Virtual Learning Space (VLS)," called Pulse!! will provide a lifelike, interactive, virtual environment in which civilian and military heath care professionals can practice clinical skills in order to better respond to catastrophic incidents, such as bioterrorism.
The core design of Pulse!! will provide a totally immersive, 3-D experience that focuses on discrete actions professionals must master. The user will experience critical thinking, peer and patient interaction, and emotional observation, all simultaneously, in a random - not scripted - virtual environment.
Posted by rsk at November 10, 2006 03:22 PM