“Fallo de Sistema” program has interviewed Immersium Studio on the occasion of having won the 2021 Auggie Award in the Best VR Healthcare Solution category. This winning immersive experience (VR ICU Upskilling for Health Professionals) has allowed more than 20,000 health professionals to enter a virtual ICU and learn to make key decisions to treat Covid patients. Thanks to Virtual Reality, all this has been possible without leaving their homes and without saturating the intensive care rooms (ICU) that barely managed to care for the thousands of daily patients in the pandemic toughest time.
“Fallo del Sistema” program is a scientific outreach program, science fiction, and video game that is broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. It is a Radio 3 program (Radio Nacional España) presented by Santiago Bustamante.
You can listen to the interview here: “Programa 486: Una UCI virtual” (28/11/2021)
https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/fallo-de-sistema/486-uci-virtual/6228210/
Santiago Bustamante has interviewed our CEO Luis Villarejo and our CTO Iván Martí, to find out the specific training details and reflect the current immersive technologies state and their application in different fields.
- Santiago: “… Your experience tries to be as faithful as possible to what a health worker or a professional is going to find when they arrive at an ICU, and specifically what a Covid patient is going to find to act with issues as complicated as the respirator”
- Luis: “We were commissioned to generate a training experience that would help train health professionals who had no experience in ICUs… we implemented a Virtual Reality solution… through 360 video with a real scenario in which things happen… and the user must make decisions. It is their decisions that determine the training course… the user learns by making decisions, making mistakes, receiving feedback and comparing the different decisions consequences. That is where the “active learning” process comes in with a high realism degree.”
- Santiago: “Decisions involve saving lives or not, similar to a commercial flight simulator… This experience has been done in record time, in the pandemic midst. You released it in July”
- Luis: “This is a European Commission project in which we work in co-creation with experts in care in ICUs, both from the doctor point of view, as well as that of a nurse…We developed it in 3 and a half months, from scratch and with a great effort”…
- Santiago: “At a time when there has been a collapse in ICUs… your solution has been very useful, it has saved a lot of knowledge, and from that knowledge many lives”
- Luis: “In those moments in which we are developing the experience, there is an urgency, an urgent need for qualified personnel to help people… The European Commission initiative was born to train professionals who had no previous experience, to give them that knowledge and provide them with the necessary confidence so that they take a step forward and appear in those ICUs to join the work and help”… Two master cases were prepared, one with a patient with severe Covid, in serious condition, and another that was not so serious… The ultimate goal was to strengthen what the European Commission calls the “healthcare army” in European public hospitals, to have more trained and qualified hands to help“
- Santiago: “Let’s go to the slightly more technical part…, Iván“
- Iván: “For this project… we have the mobile devices limitation, because in the market there are an infinite number of devices, processors, screens, inches… it is not the same to develop this type of project for a specific platform, for example for an oculus quest … to work with a huge devices number and the project working on all those devices, with the quality that the client wants”
- Santiago: “… The complexity is that it has to work on all mobile devices, and there are many in Europe… I suppose you have standardized it, something almost universal, to offer an immersive experience with your phone. That is a complexity. How is the feedback from people?”
- Iván: “In general, the feedback has been quite positive…”
- Luis: “From the evaluations we have done… the experience was scored 96 out of 100… It is a European Commission program that they make available to any European public hospital… It is totally free training, but you need prior registration with the European Commission. It has been active for 7 months. It is now on pause. There are future plans to open it to more people”
Here you can read more information about the 2021 Auggie Award we have won:
https://immersiumstudio.com/portfolio_page/immersium-studio-wins-auggie-awards-2021/?lang=en
In this video you can see more information about this project.
