A medical rescue in the high mountains, an emergency intervention during an earthquake or a pioneering double transplant without entering the operating room. Virtual simulation is the new frontier of teaching. And the first Immersive Interactive Room has opened in Turin: a place where technology, creativity and teaching innovation create a multi-sensory environment to improve the training of students and healthcare workers “in the field”, allowing them to make mistakes, learn from their mistakes and, therefore, increase safety in the clinical setting.
Touch screens and lasers
It is located within the educational center of the San Luigi Gonzaga university hospital in Orbassano and offers the possibility of “working in an advanced simulation environment that transforms the space into another reality, with which one can interact thanks to special laser projectors that transform its walls into interactive touch screens,” he explains David Lembo, president of the Medicine and Surgery degree course. It was set up by the British company Gener8 and – explains the professor – “it is the most advanced model in Europe, one of the most complete and equipped in the world. Thanks to technologies such as the Rumble Floor the floor can also vibrate and there are also smoke dispensers and over 400 different odors, which fully simulate the surrounding places and atmospheric events and further enhance the sensation of really being on the simulated scene, stimulating all the intellectual, emotional and sensorial resources of healthcare personnel, without any real risk”.
Entering inside is impressive: it feels like being in an 8D cinema, like those found in amusement parks. But, even if it could be seen superficially by some as a sort of “toy”, the device actually contains almost infinite possibilities: reconstructing diagnostic and therapeutic paths, better understanding the physiological processes that constitute the basis of the functioning of our body, understanding how drugs act in the body and create real “escape rooms”, which test the analysis, intervention and decision-making skills of healthcare professionals and future doctors.
Continuous training
In short, “a place where innovative teaching, research and continuous training feed each other – he adds Flap – with the aim of allowing students and healthcare personnel to practice in a protected, but realistic environment, which allows them not only to acquire skills but also to make mistakes safely, analyze them and, therefore, perfect practical and relational skills for the benefit of patients”. It is increasingly clear that technologies such as augmented reality and Artificial Intelligence can also make a difference in healthcare. “Simulation in medical-scientific training is recognized as a fundamental tool for reducing clinical risk – underlines Flap – above all because it gives the possibility of reducing the probability of adverse events occurring during a real intervention”.
“The new Immersive Interactive Room will allow students, doctors and healthcare professionals to deal with delicate medical situations in different clinical environments created in immersive and realistic teaching scenarios”, confirms the rector of the University of Turin, Stefano Geunaaccording to which this is a “virtuous project of experiential learning to be copied and replicated in other realities”.
“It’s an extraordinary opportunity – he concludes Davide Minnitigeneral director of San Luigi Gonzaga -: having such a technologically advanced tool available, a synergy between University and hospital, takes the offer of regional public health into the future in terms of professional competence and safety for patients”.
This latest generation healthcare escape room is located in the Advanced Medical Simulation Center of the San Luigi Educational Centre, inaugurated in 2020 with the contribution of Compagnia San Paolo, which was already equipped with excellent simulation systems, including hi-tech mannequins that recreate the adult and pediatric patient, and the most innovative multimedia systems. Here there are three classrooms that make numerous high-fidelity instruments available to students and specialists, including those for arthroscopy and laparoscopy which allow the acquisition of minimally invasive surgical techniques. A room, set up as a critical area department, offers the possibility of staging medical procedures in high fidelity, managed from a control room connected by one-way glass and cameras and environmental audio systems.
Virtual bodies for real patients silvia de francia 03 March 2020
The center also hosts the most advanced anatomical table for the virtual dissection of the human body, already used by many of the most important schools and institutions in the world: another cutting-edge tool that allows you to visualize the anatomy as if it were a real corpse with the advantage of an interactive touch-screen experience.