Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospitalhave
teamed up to build VR training modules
Orange County, CA - April 12th 2017 - Already a staple in the consumer market Virtual Reality (VR) simulation has emerged onto the medical field. Although popular in the entertainment sector, hospitals are integrating VR headgear, and assorted technology into medical procedure.
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have teamed up to build VR training modules to replicate surgical rooms for skills training prior to facing the challenge of live patients. Practice is often time consuming and not always permitted given the circumstances, however these VR replicas negate the issue. With no time constraints or procedural limitations, interns and practitioners can work a myriad of cases and repeat those with poor performance until comfortable. This ensures skill enhancement and a reduction in patient harm when put into practice.
Surgical training programs using VR are working towards a future of error free performance. Johns Hopkins Medicine reported that surgical never-events, mistakes that should never happen, have 4,000 separate occurrences annually. Over a 20-year time span these errors in surgery account for 6.6 percent of deaths, 32.9 percent of permanent injury, and 59.2 percent of temporary injury of patients. Massachusetts General Hospital notes, “Flight training for pilots has long depended on simulation; the medical profession may also benefit given the potential to reduce medical errors and increase patient safety.”The potential advantages of VR technology are boundless, however there is much to be done before it is seamlessly integrated into hospitals on a global scale. This type of technological advancement has catapulted modern surgery into the future.
