How Holograms Are Helping Medical Training
July 05 2018 - 9:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Leigh Kamping-Carder
The young man arrived at the clinic with a laceration down his
back -- an injury he'd suffered while mountain biking. After
suturing his wound and administering painkillers and antibiotics,
nurses left him for 30 minutes of observation. Moments later, he
began itching and broke into hives. He was going into anaphylactic
shock.
The patient, in this instance, was a hologram. The nurses were
students at San Diego State University and Texas Tech University
Health Sciences Center. And the man's allergic reaction was one of
10 scenarios available in HoloPatient, a mixed-reality software
program that offers would-be nurses experience coping with medical
dilemmas in a potentially more cost-efficient way than current
teaching tools.
HoloPatient is one of a suite of educational applications
developed by Pearson PLC, the London-based education company, for
Microsoft Corp.'s HoloLens headset. When users press a button on
the goggles, a three-dimensional, life-size patient avatar appears
in a real-life classroom.
Though neither mixed reality nor virtual reality -- which
immerses users in a fully virtual environment -- is widespread in
health-sciences programs, both are becoming more common. Recently,
schools like Texas Tech, Western University of Health Sciences in
Pomona, Calif., and the University of Nebraska Medical Center in
Omaha have invested in full-scale "simulation centers." These
facilities include mock hospital settings and technology like
360-degree video, interactive digital walls, virtual-reality and
mixed-reality headsets and holographic-projection screens. (UNMC's
192,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open in 2019.)
Professors see the technology as a way to immerse students in
otherwise inaccessible real-world settings in a relatively
cost-effective and easily reproducible way. "Do I want my students
to experience a patient fall? Absolutely not," says Philip Greiner,
director of SDSU's school of nursing, describing a chronic hospital
problem. But to prepare them for such a scenario, "I want to be
able to reproduce that for every single one of my students."
Simulation is not new in health-sciences education. To give
students hands-on experience, most schools use actors, known as
"standardized patients," or computerized mannequins that blink and
breathe like humans. Neither option is ideal. A mannequin can cost
up to $60,000 and requires storage space and pricey maintenance,
while actors must be brought in repeatedly for each class, Dr.
Greiner says. Both require "mulage," or specialized makeup to mimic
wounds and other conditions.
Mixed reality is not a perfect solution for student training.
Simulated patients can't respond to questions, and students can't
touch them. Some professors resist the technology, even as more of
their students get comfortable with it outside school, says Robert
Hasel, who recently retired as an associate dean at Western after
developing its simulation center.
But mixed- and virtual-reality programs like HoloPatient
represent an accessible supplement to existing technologies, and a
substitute for schools that lack the resources to invest in actors,
mannequins or simulation centers, program directors say. "We're
helping in terms of cost, scalability, repeatability, access to the
experience," says Mark Christian, Pearson's global director of
immersive learning.
Over the past two years, Pearson developed three HoloPatient
scenarios -- the allergic cyclist, an older adult taking a balance
test and a victim of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- with
the schools. The company filmed the scenes using a standardized
patient and Microsoft's proprietary holographic capture technology,
which employs 106 cameras ringed around a 10-foot green-screen
dome. The schools tested the programs last year, and will add
HoloPatient to a limited number of classes in the fall. In May,
Pearson began selling $50,000 packages to colleges, which include
four HoloLens headsets and access to the full software suite. (The
headsets, which are intended for commercial or developer use, cost
either $3,000 or $5,000.)
It's too soon to say whether mixed-reality or virtual-reality
education will improve medical care. But, for Dr. Hasel, "this
direction of technology is creating a revolution in the way we
teach medical science."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 05, 2018 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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