360 degrees of neurological amazingness

It was an ordinary day, and I was looking at my Facebook feed, and a friend had posted a video he made while snowboarding. Being on vacation, and a little bored, I clicked on it expecting to see a snowboarding epic move or an epic fall or something. What I saw was the guy's mitten and the trail ahead. Not that cool, I thought, until I touched the screen and panned around. He had captured a 360 video that the user can pan around. I could look at the sky, the trees reflection in his goggles, his board, or the trail ahead. It was very cool.

Why am I talking about this on a medical education post? Because, I looked and these cameras are now affordable. The one he bought is a little over $300. From a quick web search, there are now a bunch of camera options to shoot in 360. Couple that with virtual reality headsets which are also dramatically decreasing in price, and there are a lot of opportunities to develop medical educational materials in ways never possible before.

Here's a couple of examples from Mythbusters diving with sharks, and USA Today flying with the Blue Angels. You may have already seen videos like this where you can pan and zoom, or if you have VR googles, you can just look around.

Imagine showing patient videos to students where the student actually feels like they are in the room with you as you examine a patient. We share videos in movement disorders frequently of unusual tremors and movements.Imagine being able to look like you would in an actual patient visit at a life-size patient. Imagine if you couple this with augmented reality programs that can allow the learners to interact with the patients, and we are not that far from simulation situations that truly do simulate real life.

Affordable 360 cameras are now on the market. Couple with more affordable VR headsets, and the possibilities for VR or augmented reality to teach medical students has opened way up. Now it's up to you all to go out there and buy some toys, and start making cool stuff.

Virtual hospitals - The future of medical simulation?

I was flipping through Facebook the other day, and saw a video posted by a friend.  It was over 17 minutes long which is eternal in the world of Facebook videos, but I thought I'd give it a try as it looked interesting.  It ended showing people from 'The Gadget Show' making a simulator which not too long ago would have been pure fantasy.  They built a tent with 360 video output capability that also has a 360 degree treadmill to allow you to move in the virtual world by walking as you would in real life.  They also hooked up an X-Box Kinnect sensor to pick up other body movements.  They through in a few other cool add-ons, and they ended up with a truly immersive environment for a first person shooter game.  You can watch the video here.

I got to thinking that this technology is now available, and could be used in medical school to train physicians.  It's not yet at the level of being a holodeck, but it is closer than we've ever been before.  I could envision a program where there is an ambulatory office building, and the student has their own clinic to run where simulated patients come in be interviewed.  The physical examination is done through use of gestures mimicking what the real PE would be, or it could be coupled with a simulation manikin to elicit the physical findings.  Then the student has to go back to a virtual staffing room, and dictate the encounter, and order testing.  They then move on to the next patient.  If you had enough of these built (assuming in the future this type of technology gets cheaper), you could envision having a 'continuity clinic' set up completely in a simulator.  This might include seeing some of your regular patients back as they come through the emergency room for acute conditions or even going to the OR.  It could be as complex as there is time and money to create the scenarios.

I often thought in residency that it would be interesting to have an immersive simulated hospital where you could spend at least some of your time as a medical student or as a junior resident.  There you could have freedom to make some truly independent decisions and see what happens.  I think the advantages to something like this are obvious and are akin to the flight simulators that pilots use to train.  It will never replace time spent on the wards with skilled clinicians giving supervision and feedback.  I don't think the technology is there for a completely realistic medical simulation.  But it is getting closer.