A new effort from Cambridge University brings medical training in ‘mixed reality’ one step closer with modules that allow student doctors to interact with a ‘holographic’ patient.
Traditional simulation has numerous costs including maintaining simulation centres, their equipment and the faculty and staff hours to operate the labs and hire and train patient actors. This new technology could provide more flexible, cost-effective training that can be accessed all over the world.
HoloScenarios is a new training application based on life-like holographic patient scenarios, is being developed by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH), in partnership with the University of Cambridge and US tech company GigXR. The first module focuses on common respiratory conditions and emergencies.
“Mixed reality is increasingly recognised as a useful method of simulator training,” said project leader Dr Arun Gupta, consultant anaesthetist at CUH and director of postgraduate education at CUH.
“As institutions scale procurement, the demand for platforms that offer utility and ease of mixed reality learning management is rapidly expanding,” he said.
Learners wearing mixed-reality headsets can interact with each other and a multi-layered, medically accurate ‘holographic’ patient. This creates a unique environment to learn and practice vital, real-time decision making and treatment choices.
Medical instructors with their own headsets can make changes on the fly, by changing patient responses or introducing complications – whether in person in a teaching group or over the internet.
Learners can also watch, contribute to and assess the holographic patient scenarios from Android, iOS smartphone or tablet. This means true-to-life, safe-to-fail immersive learning can be accessed, delivered and shared across the world, with the technology now available for license to learning institutions everywhere.
Professor Riikka Hofmann at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education is leading an analysis of the technology as a teaching method.
“Our research is aimed at uncovering how such simulations can best support learning and accelerate the adoption of effective mixed reality training while informing ongoing development,” said Prof Hofmann.
“We hope that it will help guide institutions in implementing mixed reality into their curricula, in the same way institutions evaluate conventional resources, such as textbooks, manikins, models or computer software, and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes.”
Junior doctor Aniket Bharadwaj is one of the first to try out the new technology. “Throughout medical school we would have situations where actors would come in an act as patients. With the pandemic a lot of that changed to tablet based interactions because of the risk to people of the virus,” he said.
“Having a hologram patient you can see, hear and interact with is really exciting and will really make a difference to student learning.”
The first module features a hologram patient with asthma, followed by anaphylaxis, pulmonary embolism and pneumonia. Further modules in cardiology and neurology are in development.
Delivered by the Gig Immersive Learning Platform, HoloScenarios aims to centralise and streamline access and management of mixed reality learning, and encapsulate the medical experience of world-leading doctors at CUH and across the University of Cambridge.
Source: University of Cambridge
