Virtual Reality Outperforms Reality in
Medical Training
- Spin-offs of ATP-funded research include four products, three of
which are used in six countries.
- Products reduce nurse training costs, encourage practice, and
accurately assess procedural skill.
- Other benefits include less trauma to patients and reduced use of
animals in medical training.
Highly realistic yet cost-effective virtual reality (VR) technologies are beginning to
supplant traditional methods of training medical personnel, offering the promise of more
skilled practitioners, less trauma for patients, and reduced costs. In the past,
simulation technology has not offered sufficient realism to mimic medical procedures,
which typically have been learned through practice on cadavers, animals, and sometimes
crude models, such as plastic arms. HT Medical Systems, Inc. (Gaithersburg, Md.) used
co-funding from NIST’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP) to advance medical
simulation technology to a high level of realism at reasonable cost. In its first ATP
project, which ended in 1998, HT Medical developed the capabilities to model complex
natural phenomena, such as the cutting and bleeding of human tissues, and packaged them
into a “printing press for medical VR,” which can create three-dimensional
visual structures from any sequential two-dimensional images. In the second ATP project,
the company developed technologies for simulating minimally invasive surgery, including
robotic tactile-feedback devices that replicate the “feel” of endoscopic and
endovascular procedures.
The ATP funding helped the small company to assemble the required expertise in fields
such as physiology, anatomy, computer science, mechanical and electrical engineering, and
art. It also enabled the design of technologies that balance realism with computational
efficiency, such that three of the four products commercialized based on the ATP-funded
research can run on personal computers instead of more costly graphics workstations. One
such product combines visual and tactile elements to teach nurses the cognitive and motor
skills needed to insert a needle properly into a vein—the most common medical
procedure. More than 200 of these systems have been installed in six countries so far, and
HT’s revenues from this product are growing at 47 percent per quarter. Research at
Plattsburgh State University of New York shows that this system costs less than plastic
arms and encourages more practice. A University of Maryland Medical Center study of
another product, a bronchoscopy simulator, shows that it can differentiate among users
with different levels of training, suggesting that it can accurately evaluate competence.
At least one medical institution is now using the simulators instead of animals for
training purposes, according to the company. Since receiving its first ATP award, HT
Medical has quadrupled in size and attracted millions of dollars in private investments as
well as follow-on grants from other federal agencies. Spin-offs of the ATP projects
include an effort to benchmark medical simulation and a new fitness company that markets
exercise bicycles described as “human-powered flight simulators.”
ATP funding: $2,560,000 (two projects)
Non-ATP funding: $2,950,000 (two projects)
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information
May 2000
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