Category: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

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Children’s Hospital Los Angeles And Oculus To Expand Their VR Training Program

The potential for virtual reality (VR) within the medical sector has been huge and seen a number of technological advancements happen here. Now, Oculus have revealed that they will be expanding their VR medical training program to reach new institutions and help bring further benefits to the sector by means of the immersive technology.

This all started last year when Oculus announced they would be partnering with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) to build a VR simulation that would efficiently and effectively train medical students and staff to respond in high-stakes, low-frequency pediatric emergencies. The training application was built within the Unity Engine in collaboration with AiSolve and BioflightVR to form the backbone of a six-month pilot study.

Now, following the initial results of the study which have turned out to be promising, CHLA is now requiring that the training be used for all incoming residents and to offer it as an optional supplement for medical students. Alongside this, Oculus are also expanding the original reach of the innovative VR research program to 11 more medical institutions and healthcare networks within the United States and beyond.

“A limitation of many outpatient offices and care centers is lack of space for simulation rooms and simulation centers,” explained principal researcher on the project Dr. Josh Sherman. “Using Oculus Go for our VR modules will allow for on-the-spot training without the need for the extra real estate.”

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

The Oculus Go headset will be used for the program to allow for an accessible means to deploy the VR simulation to the new institutions and healthcare provides who are now going to be participating in CHLA’s research initiative. Some of those include the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and Yale New Haven Health.

“Currently, we’re only able to run critical events such as pediatric resuscitation training two to four times per year since we cannot take our teams away from patient care more frequently,” Said Kathryn Schaivone (MHA, CHSE) of Kaiser Permanente. “VR levels the playing field in a way that doesn’t happen with in-person methods and provides the flexibility for more frequent participation in simulation.”

This expansion of the research program will ensure that the data which is generated becomes more varied and useful leading to further improvements within the medical sector for pediatric emergencies. VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on the progress of the research program along with any updates from CHLA or Oculus, so make sure to keep reading.

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Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Using VR Training for Trauma Situations

The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has revealed a collaboration with UK-based artificial intelligence (AI) specialist AiSolve, Bioflight VR, a Hollywood-based VFX specialist, and Oculus on a VR training system for emergency paediatric trauma situations. 

The VR simulation aims to create a cost-effective, realistic and reliable training programme rather than using the traditional method of mannequins. These are normally quite expensive with the hospital spending around $430,000 USD annually to train staff on mannequins, it can also be very time-consuming.

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So a team of programmers at AiSolve took a conceived medical environment and created an AI powered virtual world where students can make decisions and progress or re-evaluate their decisions based upon responses from the virtual patient, virtual medical staff and program. All the scenarios were developed from real case studies provided by the hospital’s doctors, fully realised in VR with multiple options, dialogue, possible events and a variety of events that may happen during a genuine paediatric emergency.

AiSolve CEO Devi Kolli said in a statement: “The aim of this is to prepare medical staff with the most realistic environment possible so that they experience the fast-moving, life-and-death, decision-making process multiple times and create strategies to make fast and accurate decisions for when children’s lives are in the balance. Through our collaboration with Oculus, Facebook and BioflightVR, we feel we’ve created the most realistic and immersive educational tool for healthcare providers that’s ever been developed.”

“On average we need one hour to prepare a 30 minute, mannequin-based simulation, and another 30 minutes to clean up,” according to Dr Todd Chang of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “Our organisation pays around $430,000 annually to train staff on mannequins, despite it being very time consuming as it’s the only best simulated training solution up until now.”

Dr Chang continued: “Experimental learning is among the best way to practice paediatric emergencies. We had a rather aggressive timetable and the VR simulation literally improved week by week. VR allows for the first-time experiential learning where not all the people are in the same room at the same time. It is far more flexible and students can perform the training far more often.”

Beginning in early 2016 a fully-working model was delivered in early 2017 and the development and medical teams will continue to monitor and enhance the virtual world as more users learn with it.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of medical VR, reporting back with the latest advancements.