Clinical Simulation Industry Global News Update – June 2023

June has been a busy month for the global healthcare simulation community with a plethora of clinical simulation conferences, research updates, product announcements, competition updates, and other key article publications. This HealthySimulation.com article summarizes all the latest medical simulation news from around the world. You can sign up for our free newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest simulated healthcare news, webinar announcements, job postings and more!

Laerdal Medical and SimX partner to widen the impact of VR medical simulation training: Patient simulation is a critical component of training healthcare providers for the realities of practice without posing risks to real patients. Laerdal Medical, a leader in patient simulation, and SimX, a leader in virtual reality medical simulation, today announced a partnership to help increase patient safety with a VR simulation training solution that prepares providers to deliver optimal care. Under the partnership, Laerdal will become a main distributor of the SimX virtual reality simulation platform for hospitals, EMS, and government customers in the U.S. and Canada.

Laerdal Medical, Wolters Kluwer, and the National League for Nursing collaborate to launch a virtual reality solution supporting new nurse transition to practice: Nursing schools are facing mounting pressure to yield practice-ready graduates to address the nursing shortage crisis in the U.S. High patient caseloads in short-staffed hospitals have made it even more critical for new graduate nurses to possess sound prioritization skills and clinical judgment. To support the training needs of these essential nursing competencies, Laerdal Medical, Wolters Kluwer Health, and the National League for Nursing today launched vrClinicals for Nursing at the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL) conference in Providence, RI. vrClinicals for Nursing uses virtual reality (VR) technology to immerse learners in an authentic, busy hospital environment. Just like in the real hospital setting, learners navigate diverse, multi-patient scenarios with interruptions to care and unfolding clinical experiences covering a range of learning objectives. These lifelike encounters provide the clinical practice opportunities that learners need to refine their prioritization skills, build clinical judgment, and prepare for their transition to the nursing workforce.

Key features of the new vrClinicals for Nursing include:

• Multi-patient scenarios focusing on prioritization across the ward
• Unfolding clinical experiences with a focused range of learning objectives designed to build practice readiness
• National League for Nursing (NLN)-authored content aligned with Next Generation NCLEX
• Guided reflection exercises and measurable feedback to the student and instructor
• 4-6 hours of total time per clinical experience
• Compatibility with Meta Quest 2 headset
• Simplified, resource-effective method for facilitating multi-patient simulations

CAE Healthcare and Louisiana Delta Community College Announced Opening of New Simulation Center: CAE Healthcare and Louisiana Delta Community College (LDCC) today announced the opening of a new CAE-designed and –outfitted simulation centre on LDCC’s Bastrop campus.The new facility, owned by LDCC, is the latest initiative from CAE Healthcare’s turnkey portfolio, which helps organizations streamline and integrate their large-scale projects with support from a team experienced in solution integration.”It is a pleasure to unveil a project that we have spent so many hours planning and perfecting to ensure our students receive the best training opportunities and learning experiences possible,” said Antonio Hearn, Campus Director at Bastrop Louisiana Delta Community College. “We’re honored to have partnered with CAE Healthcare to help bring this facility, which will serve a vital role in our community, to life.”The 6,970-square-foot facility is equipped with several educational tools and products from CAE Healthcare, a global leader in simulated healthcare training.

When Simulation Is NOT the Answer: Own It! Written by UPMC WISER Director Paul Phrampus, MD, this article explores when NOT to utilize clinical simulation, suggesting “as leaders and managers of simulation programs we are charged with creating the return on investment for our programs. We are entrusted by the people who provide our funding to be good stewards of the investment and ongoing operational support of the simulation efforts. It is up to us to hold the keys to the vault that we call simulation so that it gets engaged, deployed and/or utilized in the fashion that generates the expected outcomes with the highest amount of efficiency and effectiveness. In short, don’t simulate because you can, simulate because you need to! As your simulation center becomes a more recognized resource within your institution, there will often be an increase in request for services. As this occurs it is critically important that leaders of programs are ensuring that the simulations are bringing value.”

AI-powered Robots, Manikins that Cry, VR: Inside UT Arlington’s Smart Hospital: The University of Texas at Arlington’s 150,000-square-foot Health Innovation and Smart Hospital features artificial intelligence-powered robots, virtual reality simulators and classrooms designed to mimic hospital units and patients’ homes, D Magazine reported May 23. The robots can simulate tens of thousands of symptoms, according to the story. AI-backed manikins can provide up to 70,000 responses to students’ questions while breathing, sweating, crying and foaming at the mouth. The aspiring healthcare professionals can don VR goggles to practice various medical scenarios and talk to “patients.”

Will a ‘National Patient Safety Board,’ Modeled After the NTSB, Actually Fly? People concerned about the safety of patients often compare health care to aviation. Why, they ask, can’t hospitals learn from medical errors the way airlines learn from plane crashes? CNN logo This story also ran on CNN. It can be republished for free. That’s the rationale behind calls to create a “National Patient Safety Board,” an independent federal agency that would be loosely modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which is credited with increasing the safety of skies, railways, and highways by investigating why accidents occur and recommending steps to avoid future mishaps.

Lumeto’s InvolveXR Platform Will Support Clinical Training to Enhance Patient Safety in Remote Communities and Space through Project Funded by The Canadian Space Agency (CSA): Lumeto will join a world class technology and healthcare consortium led by the Canadian Space Mining Corporation to prototype a new frontier of connected care solutions aimed at empowering remote communities (both in space and on earth) to self-sufficiently provide ongoing high quality healthcare. Lumeto’s InvolveXR training platform will play an integral role in providing remote, on demand training for the diagnoses, treatment and care utilizing the integrated medical equipment and devices in a digital twin of this connected care module.

OADN Virtual Simulation Reviews: OADN is the national voice and a pivotal resource for community college nursing education and the associate degree pathway. OADN works to expand networks that promote leadership, collaboration, and advocacy to further enrich nursing education and the communities we serve.

VR Training Prepares Nurses for Real-World Practice: A recent study found that 42.5% of first year nurses have considered leaving the occupation. To help improve retention of new nurses and better train them for the demands of real-world practice, leading institutions have been testing a new training tool for nursing students that leverages virtual reality (VR). In an article, Julie Stegman, VP, Nursing Segment, Health Learning, Research & Practice at Wolters Kluwer, can discuss why, and how nursing education is leveraging simulation tech to meet the needs of today’s students.

How Simulation Games Help in Education and What are Their Benefits? Simulation games have long been one of the most popular genres of all time with millions of fans from all around the world. Unlike many other games, simulations are specially designed to put players into real-world situations and challenges with reasonable tools and skills to overcome them. And while this genre has lately seen some absurd games that are purely for entertainment purposes, there are other uses for simulations as well.

Virtual Reality Prepares Ohio State Students for Real World: In the College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE), undergraduate students who are preparing to become middle and high school English and journalism teachers use virtual reality to visualize the concepts they’re studying, said Professor Detra Price-Dennis. “The focus of our course is new media and journalism,” she said. “One way to help them think about new media journalism is to actually have lots of experiences with media-making and thinking about using the tool to tell a story.”

Transforming Surgical Outcomes: On a shuttle ride from work, Dr. Jacques and Dr. Smriti Zaneveld found themselves in the company of medical residents and students engaged in a discussion about acquiring practical experience, particularly in complex surgical skills through patient operations. With an ongoing PhD in human genetics, their curiosity led them to uncover a remarkable and relatively unknown fact that the surgeon’s role is pivotal in driving over 90 per cent of key outcome metrics for numerous procedures. As a result, Lazarus 3D was born.

Service Member Teaches Different Training Methods During Joint Exercise: FORT CAVAZOS, Texas – Service members and multinational forces gather for Joint Emergency Medicine Exercise 2023 (JEMX2023) at the Medical Simulation Training Center (MSTC), here, June 7, 2023. JEMX-23 is a multinational training event for partnership in medical excellence where all trainees receive professional classroom instruction along with practical trainings in different events such as Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC), damage control resuscitation/surgery, care of Military Working Dogs (MWD), autologous fresh whole blood transfusion, burn management, and Critical Care Air Transport Team (CCATT) capabilities.

The Potential of Metaverse in Disrupting Healthcare: The metaverse is revolutionizing several industries, including healthcare, where its impact could be transformational. The future of healthcare is digital, as we know, and the metaverse as an upcoming technology has enormous potential for the industry. The metaverse is essentially a cumulation of many enabling technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, quantum computing, and the internet of medical devices.

Bloomberg: Virtual Reality May Help Cure Health Care: (Paywalled): To the uninitiated, “virtual reality” may summon visions of dystopian digital galaxies or zombie-slaying epics. Increasingly, though, VR is showing promise in real-world industries. In particular: It may soon revolutionize the health-care business. Although still a small market, health-focused VR has shown potential in treating a range of conditions, from phobias to chronic pain. It may some day transform medical education. By one estimate, the market will reach $9.5 billion by 2028, up from $1.8 billion in 2021.

The Patient Safety Technology Challenge: Funded by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, sponsored MIT’s Critical Datathon this year. Held on MIT’s campus from May 18-19th, 2023, focused on health equity within patient safety. The Datathon paired students from underrepresented groups in the greater Boston-area to health equity investigators across several disciplines, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, social work, and health equity to serve as mentors.

Virtual Simulation in Nursing Education: Headset Virtual Reality and Screen-based Virtual Simulation Offer A Comparable Experience: Simulations have become widely used in health care education to enhance learner preparedness. Virtual simulations, both screen- or headset-based, provide nursing students with the ability and flexibility to practice patient care at their convenience and obtain valuable automatic feedback before treating patients. While cheaper than in-person simulations and effective in teaching students, limited work exists to provide guidance concerning which modality type (screen-based or headset) offers an optimal interactive learning experience.

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About the Author: Lance Baily

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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 new co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” is available now. 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 two amazing daughters and two crazy dachshunds.