Virtual Science Simulation Company Labster Acquires UbiSim to Globally Expand Nursing Skills VR Training
Late last week Labster, a leading provider of virtual labs and interactive science simulation, announced its acquisition of UbiSim, a top provider of virtual reality nursing simulation training. Recently securing a series C $60M investment from Silicon Valley’s prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Named one of Newsweek’s 50 U.S. Businesses that “stood out during the COVID19 pandemic”, Labster’s core team of 200 employees supports over 2,000 universities and high-schools with tens of thousands of courses and millions of students who need specialized medical lab training. With the PR announcement of acquisition of VR clinical training platform UbiSim, Labster immediately secures its elevated place within the global healthcare simulation industry!
Editor’s Note: This is one of the first times that serious silicon valley capital investment firms have indirectly invested into key clinical simulation companies — which we think speaks volumes to the potential that Healthcare Simulation is About to Become One of the World’s Most Important Industries. We at HealthySimulation.com are extremely excited for what this new partnership will bring both companies, and what it means for our industry’s global future!
“We are thrilled to welcome the UbiSim team to the Labster family. The global nursing sector is an extremely important and exciting application for virtual technologies and UbiSim’s high-quality and scalable training platform offers a truly unique solution,” said Michael Bodekaer Jensen, CEO and Co-Founder of Labster. “With the strategic addition of UbiSim, Labster is well positioned to play an important role in the future of nursing education and to help address the critical challenge of the global nursing shortage, estimated at a shortfall of 5.9 million nurses by the World Health Organization. Labster is proud to expand our mission, together with UbiSim, to empower the next generation of scientists and healthcare workers around the world.”
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Also speaking on the deal, Gauthier Dubruel, Co-Founder of UbiSim shared exclusively with HealthySimulation.com that “This is an exciting day for nursing education and the healthcare simulation space! Labster is trusted by more than 2,000 institutions globally with millions of students engaging successfully with their virtual lab and interactive science simulations. By joining their amazing team, UbiSim will be able to take the nursing simulation space to an entirely new level. Not only are our visions, missions, and culture fully aligned, but Labster and UbiSim have high-quality products that complement each other perfectly. Combining UbiSim and Labster simulations provides nursing educators and institutions with an unmatched range of best in class content and tools to keep on improving student engagement and learning outcomes. Together we will continue to grow and head for our objective: empowering the next generation of nurses and healthcare practitioners!”
Labster, founded in Denmark in 2012, is a learning platform with an ecosystem of science learning resources, including a metaverse of virtual science simulations, lab manuals, lab reports, and 3D animated videos. Evidence shows Labster improves learning outcomes. Instructors who have tracked the impact of Labster virtual labs in their courses report that students’ learning outcomes improved by an average of one letter grade, enabling more students to persist in critical courses rather than dropping out of science early in their academic careers. With this acquisition, Labster significantly expands its nursing education offering, further supporting its mission to transform access to high quality science education.
UbiSim, founded in Switzerland in 2017, offers immersive virtual training simulations for nurses and healthcare providers, putting them at the forefront of the increasing tech revolution in health care. Their immersive VR training platform enables nursing students to develop clinical reasoning, collaboration and communication skills by engaging with real world scenarios and lifelike patients in a safe learning environment.
Labster focuses on early nursing education, offering simulations in biology, anatomy and physiology, and helping institutions to overcome limited access to laboratories and equipment. UbiSim focuses on later stage clinical nursing training, offering simulations that feature patients across the lifespan in a broad continuum of care settings, helping institutions to overcome limited access to hospitals and other clinical sites for nursing students. The two teams will immediately start learning from each other:
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For Labster, this means being inspired to focus on meeting the needs of nursing educators with VR technology and being able to offer virtual simulations that will train nurses from their general education science courses all the way to their clinical sites. For
UbiSim, this means accelerating global distribution of their industry-leading virtual nursing simulations and editable scenarios. Finally, it’s important to highlight what is not changing. Florian and Gauthier will remain at UbiSim, playing key leadership roles in the development of the team’s products. And current UbiSim customers can expect to receive the same support from the same team they’ve always relied on – in addition to new offerings.
“We felt such a clear alignment with Labster on both vision and product philosophy, which made the decision to join the Labster team incredibly easy. We are excited to continue developing the product and expand the reach to nursing students and educators globally together, “said Florian Brutsche, Co-Founder of UbiSim.
Learn More About the Labster Acquisition of UbiSim!
More About Labster
Labster is dedicated to developing fully interactive virtual laboratory simulations that are designed to enhance traditional learning outcomes by stimulating students’ natural curiosity and reinforcing the connection between science and the real world. The simulations can be used in a variety of different ways, from a full lab replacement to a supplemental learning activity. Over 3 million students in high schools and universities around the globe use Labster to perform realistic experiments, learn key science concepts, and practice their skills in a risk-free learning environment. Labster works with leading educational institutions to improve science learning, resulting in collaborations with over 1,000 institutions around the world, including ETH in Zurich, MIT and Imperial College.
More About UbiSim
UbiSim is the leading immersive VR training platform dedicated specifically to nursing. By combining evidence-based VR simulations with an intuitive, web-based authoring tool, UbiSim empowers faculty to customize and design simulations that are curated for their students’ learning objectives. UbiSim partners with U.S. and international institutions to advance the shared mission of addressing the nursing shortage by scaling high-quality nursing education.
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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