THE VIRTUAL ICU IS DESIGNED FOR
- Medical students and graduates within their pre and post gradual training
- Students of secondary medical schools to gain practical skills
- Hospitals to continuously maintain skills and develop competencies of their health care staff, simulating emergency situations, improving the efficiency of new teams, mitigation human errors and risks for patients
- Rescuers in pre-hospitalization emergency care for top quality training in intensive medicine practices
- Manufacturers of health care equipment for training users more effectively, extended service and customer support, direct experience of potential clients with their products
- VR ICU is currently tested in hospitals České Budějovice, MUNI SIMU Brno, Mladá Boleslav, Jindřichův Hradec, Tábor, Ostrava, Hradec Králové and we cooperate with manufacturers B.Braun, Fresenius, Hamilton a Linet.
InterSystems – a leading provider of data solutions for the healthcare industry – is a partner of the VR ICU® project. We share a common mission – saving patients’ lives. VR ICU® uses FHIR® standards for easy integration of the application into existing systems.
VR JIP (ICU) – virtual training site for health care staff
Effect of the training in virtual reality
Virtual reality brings an experience where the user is fully present in the virtual world and can interact with it.
The effectiveness of the learning process is determined by two facts:
- Human brains learn from experience and repetition
- Human brains can’t distinguish between virtual and real situations
It means that anything you can do in a virtual environment gives you an identical experience the same as in the real world.
This ensures you get the practical skills faster and can retain them longer, thus improving your self-confidence in executing the given tasks in the future.
Training:
• Accelerates the learning process
• Deepens practical skills
• Improves self-confidence in practice
• Reduces risk for the patient due to improper procedures
• Accelerates competent decision making in emergencies
• Enables substitutability of expert personnel
• Maintains the required level of skills in less frequently applied procedures
The purpose is to develop the right habits in setting up and operating health care devices and to practice actions in emergency situations that may occur during interactions with patients
How does it work?
After putting on the virtual reality goggles the user appears in a software developed environment simulating a real intensive medical care unit. The experience starts with the user controlling/ setting up the devices under defined conditions. The scenarios are developed in cooperation with experienced people. The users can choose from several modes from training with full help to testing individual work. The users can also choose the time and place of their training sessions as they wish. They need a space of 2.5 x 2.5 m. They are taken to the training environment as soon as they put on the VR headset. The user can train alone or under supervision. The supervisor may be connected remotely.
Future: Integration of AI – artificial intelligence to develop scenarios with various patient responses and to assess behaviour of training participants
Frequently asked questions
The devices look the same as in reality. The accuracy is over 90%. The digital model is created by scanning the real devices and converting 3D designs of the devices.
Working in the virtual reality is intuitive. The training requires no special skills – it is as easy as using a smart phone.
The hardware (VR headset) costs 15,000 CZK plus VAT
You pay for the training software in the form of a license
Currently, the law does not regulate the use of VR and AR technology.
The device operation training itself is fully compliant with requirements of the legislation and procedures of health care equipment manufacturers certified by SÚKL.
History
The Covid pandemic that started in 2020 has shown the risk of the lack of qualified staff in hospitals. Doctors and nurses were either infected or had to quarantine due to contact with infected individuals, causing a lack of personnel qualified to work, especially on lung ventilators. Training new staff in busy and risk departments has been difficult. Therefore, we have developed digital twins of the lung ventilators and dialysis machines and designed a solution for this problem using virtual reality.
Our project succeeded within the call Hack the Crisis and received positive feedback from experienced professionals. We have been granted support from the Ministry of Industry and Care for developing the prototype.
Are you interested in VR ICU® ?
Contact Us
Virtual Lab
- We are developing practical solutions with advanced technologies – virtual and augmented reality
- The applications are tailored to the needs of our clients or designed for global use
- We implement VR/AR
- We are the only company with a complex programme of development and applied research in the Czech Republic
- We have developed the best practise approach to use of VR in education, health care and social services