UCF Installs Impressive Dr. Hologram Technology to Improve Healthcare Simulation Education
Today’s most innovative hologram technology is now being used in the academic setting to provide unique healthcare simulation education experiences. This Fall, the University of Central Florida (UCF) will be providing learners with the opportunity to experience holograms in the classroom for the first time. The very lifelike live action holograms are specifically designed to help healthcare learners better understand patient safety and overall care. This realistic hologram experience is made possible by employing a piece of equipment called PORTL.
“When I saw the use of PORTL in the entertainment industry, I immediately thought of how it could be used to engage our students by seeing and learning from a variety of patients with different pathologies and varying symptom profiles. It had all the components there – the life-sized high-definition image, the ability to interact in real-time – we were inspired to make the technology work to meet our needs in training contemporary, and compassionate healthcare providers,” Said Bari Hoffman, Ph.D. Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs at the UCF College of Health Professions and Sciences.
She added that UCF plans to use this in a variety of classes, at the undergraduate and graduate level. This includes a broad spectrum of health science majors, and a variety of rehabilitation disciplines, including physical therapy, speech-language pathology and clinical social work.
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PORTL is a device that allows users to “beam themselves to a location thousands of miles away” and interact with the people there through telepresence, or “holoportation.” Founded by David Nussbaum in Los Angeles in 2019, the technology allows the user to upload and schedule live and pre-recorded content which can then be streamed anywhere in the world.
“Because I learned of the technology during the pandemic, I immediately saw how [virtual technologies] could be a stopgap for the challenges that we were facing during that time in bringing patients to class and so forth,” said Hoffman. “But I quickly started to see how this was going to remain beneficial for our students even after COVID-19. It really opens the doors for our students to engage with the greatest variety of patients, without having all the hardships of access that we typically face in bringing volunteers (especially those who are medically fragile, have mobility impairment or immunocompromised) to class.”
Through a partnership with Dr. Hologram, a telepresence healthcare technology company, PORTL is able to extend to UCF a way to depict high-fidelity simulation scenarios involving virtual patients. This modernization to the university’s education system is expected to positively impact both organizations and the communities they support by strengthening future provider competencies.
“Dr. Hologram offers technology that provides the playing of real life experiences with patients (and other healthcare content) without the high cost and burden of recruiting volunteers when running a standardized patient program,” said James Beckmann, CEO at Dr. Hologram. “The content can be utilized on demand with virtually an unlimited number of simulation modules making the system both transformative while giving back a favorable ROI to our client partners.”
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The university’s goal is to create a patient case library of conditions for learners to explore and ultimately increase their experience, confidence and skill in treating live patients. Another goal is that, by exposing learners to rare and subtle patient conditions, they will be better equipped to identify instances of these conditions in the future.
“You don’t know what you don’t know. When students see a patient with a unique symptom profile, or rare diagnosis, the student becomes more familiar and confident in their ability to help future patients by getting them to a quicker diagnosis, connecting them to the care they need, and ultimately a better quality of life,” said Hoffman.
She added that UCF is already seeing better learner engagement with the content and a more comprehensive understanding of the impact the condition has across the whole body. The resource is helping to prepare the learners with a broader perspective of lived experiences, from both the patient and caregiver, and helping them develop soft skills and a humanistic approach to care.
More About Dr. Hologram
Dr. Hologram provides medical virtual simulation technology for delivering transformative education and telemedicine applications. The company’s innovative products can be used by hospitals, universities, pharma, insurers, and government agencies, resulting in both qualitative and quantitative efficiencies benefiting all sides of the healthcare equation.
By harnessing the power of shared immersive experiences through medical virtual simulations to train future healthcare providers, staff, caregivers, and community in humanistic care, Dr. Hologram helps to elevate the effectiveness and efficiency of real-time patient care. The company’s innovations with telepresence and personal AI healthcare assistant (Jor-El) are technologically advanced telehealth tools designed to help clients lead across the highly competitive telemedicine industry.
In the evolving world of virtual reality healthcare, Dr. Hologram’s telemedicine tools provide a means for a wide variety of industries to establish transformative telehealth applications. The company expects these innovations in telepresence healthcare and virtual patient simulations to be used across colleges and universities, hospitals, healthcare providers, simulation organizations, clinics, pharmaceuticals, telemedicine and more.
“We are excited to bring high fidelity, lifelike and humanistic experiences to the simulation space. Moreover, holographic style content played in one location can now be shared in virtually an unlimited number of locations that adopt Dr. Hologram platform,” Beckmann said. “The sharing of content can also be extended to instructors, guest speakers and so on is a benefit of our university consortium. All firsts for simulation education.”
Learn More About Dr. Hologram
Image credit: University of Central Florida (UCF) – Nick Leyva ’15
Lance Baily, BA, EMT-B, is the Founder & CEO of HealthySimulation.com, which he started while serving as the Director of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas back in 2010. Lance is also the Founder and acting Advisor to the Board of SimGHOSTS.org, the world’s only non-profit organization dedicated to supporting professionals operating healthcare simulation technologies. His co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” is cited as a key source for professional certification in the industry. Lance’s background also includes serving as a Simulation Technology Specialist for the LA Community College District, EMS fire fighting, Hollywood movie production, rescue diving, and global travel. He and his wife Abigail Baily, PhD live in Las Vegas, Nevada with their two amazing daughters.
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