From
Dr. Ramy Shaaban
Disruptive Technologies in Medical Education: Escape Rooms, Virtual Reality, and Gamification
With Dr. Ramy Shaaban · hosted by Dr. M. Tom Bash & Dr. Rami Chapan
Chapter 1 of 6
Introduction
Introduction and Overview
Expert statements on this page
No expert statements were drawn from this page.
Host summaries · secondary, not cited in answers
Educational content from recorded physician discussions — not medical advice. Talk to your (or your child's) care team about your situation.
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What the experts said
Medical education has changed its focus to a more learner-centered model, placing learners at the center of innovation in training over the past two decades.
Escape room is a time-bound immersive adventure experience with hidden clues and keys where participants try to get out before time runs out.
Escape rooms can help healthcare teams develop and enhance communication, teamwork and resilience skills, as well as reinforce medical knowledge.
Virtual reality is a simulated 3D environment that allows users to explore and interact with virtual surroundings in a way that looks like reality.
NFC (near field communications) is a set of communication protocols enabling communication between two electronic devices, limited to extremely short range of 4 centimeters or 1.5 inches or less.
Medical escape rooms have been utilized to teach and reinforce topics including discussing cancer diagnosis, cardiovascular physiology, and fluids and electrolytes.
Institutions are adopting medical escape rooms to teach residents, nursing staff, and other trainees how to recognize and respond to conditions like preeclampsia, sepsis, and patient safety.
Texas Children's Hospital, University of Kansas Health System, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, and University of Minnesota have built medical escape rooms to improve education among trainees.
Casey Davis and colleagues published a how-to guide for building medical escape rooms in Medical Teacher journal in April 2022.
Metaverse is an integrated network of 3D virtual worlds accessed through a virtual reality headset, navigated using eye movements, feedback controllers, and voice commands.
Tambay Group from Dubai, UAE is the first to build a virtual hospital on a metaverse to interact with patients and improve patient experience.
Virtual hospital will provide teleconsultation where avatars can visit multiple doctors in a virtual clinic or get second opinions using virtual headsets.
Virtual hospital will offer first aid and preventative health programs using AR, VR, and artificial intelligence to educate patients and suggest treatment plans.
VR can be used to ease anxiety before procedures or during imaging, help pain post-operatively, and in some cases reduce the need for sedation or general anesthesia during minor surgical procedures.
Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, Stanford expanded its VR program in 2018 to help young patients beyond the hospital, with over 150 use cases per month, making it one of the nation's largest VR programs.
Stanford's CHARIOT program (Childhood Anxiety Reduction through Innovation and Technology) aims to take existing technologies and create new ones to address unique needs of patients.
A randomized controlled trial from Seoul National University College of Medicine showed VR experience of the preoperative process could reduce preoperative anxiety and improve compliance during anesthetic induction in children undergoing elective surgery and general anesthesia.
Enduvo allows healthcare professionals to create a unique digital twin of their patient using CT or MRI scans, which surgeons can review with a virtual headset before going into the case.
The National Institute of Health, OSF Healthcare, and Children's Hospital of Illinois use Enduvo for training surgical teams, evaluating patient cases, and research collaborations.
Precision OS creates surgical simulations to accelerate skill acquisition and surgical readiness, with VR learning partnerships at 29 medical institutions in North America including University of Connecticut, University of Toronto, and University of British Columbia.
A significant percentage of surgical residents report they do not feel ready to independently perform procedures upon completion of their training.
VR training represents an accessible, cost-effective and deliberate practice methodology to help surgeons reach a competency threshold or achieve surgical mastery.
FDA approved Precision OS Envision as a VR preoperative planning tool, available in early 2022, letting surgeons use an Oculus Quest 2 device for preoperative planning.
Surgeons used VR to separate twins with conjoined heads in a 27-hour surgery, spending hours training using VR projection with Precision OS Envision while wearing an Oculus VR headset.
The conjoined twins surgery was directed from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London while the actual surgery happened in Rio de Janeiro.
Proximy allows multiple people in remote locations to virtually interact in a way that mimics collaborating in the same operating room, using AI, machine learning, and augmented reality.
Wristbands are difficult to fasten, may irritate the skin, must be rotated to be scanned, can be too tight and hurt the patient, or too loose and fall off.
Identity Shield is an RFID-enabled smart ID sticker to replace hospital wristbands, with optical scanning option.
The Identity Shield sticker is made of thin plastic material that is adhesive, non-reactive, and hypoallergenic, includes PHI like name, date of birth, weight, blood type, and allergies, and lasts for 7 days on patients.
Common use of Identity Shield is in NICU, newborns, and children, due to the high loss rate of wristbands which is 12% in this population.
The Northwell system used the Identity Shield badge on over 30,000 patients between October 2019 and November 2020, mostly at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City during the pandemic.
According to the Northwell pilot study, 80% of clinicians prefer the Identity Shield over traditional wristbands.
The first Android device included NFC in 2010, and Apple followed in 2014 with iPhone 6, making NFC present on smartphones for several years.
Children's Health in Dallas, Texas is now using Identity Shield after Northwell Health.
