The medical field has diverse specialities and need for highly trained specialists capable of putting even the most nervous patient at ease before potentially endangering their life in an attempt to save it, or just make that life better. Few other fields have a crying need for training, and so many different ways to benefit. Yet at the same time, a constant crushing pressure on the experts and a minimal time to train.
Here, VR offers a way to give all the training any medical professional desires, at minimal or even nil recurring cost, and without requiring a constant supply of corpses or live patients upon which to practice.
Sections
There are some basics of training in VR and in AR, which are universal, no matter the field they refer to.
Rocketing Fuel Costs Promote Telelearning & Educational VR
It seems that there is a silver lining to the rocketing price of crude oil and its derivative products. With car fuel prices soaring, they are becoming beyond the means for students to afford. What happens when students cannot afford to drive, but live off-campus? They bring campus to them, instead.
The Virtual Clean Room
 Purdue University, in Indiana, US, decided to create a clean room to train students on vial procedures sterilizing implanted equipment. They could not build their own clean room, not and be able to keep it to the same standards of cleanliness. So, they created a virtual replica clean room.
Training for Patient Interaction (2)
When interacting with a patient, any medical professional has to have the skill set to be able to deal with patients in any state from calm to terrified to angry, and know what to say to put them most at ease, as well as answer whatever questions they may have.
Pharmacist Training Via Virtual Patient
 Pharmacist training has joined surgeon training, and midwifery, on the ranks of medical professionals to be trained on patient interaction and condition diagnosis via virtual reality.
Virtual Environment For Dentistry - VDITS
 The Virtual Dental Implant Training Simulation Program or VDITS is designed to help students in diagnostics, decision making and treatment protocols. However, its use is ultimately limited because VDITS is a fishbowl VR interface, not an immersive one - it expects participation via monitor screen, mouse and keyboard, rather than a full on virtual experience, at least at this stage.
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Virtual Environment For Dentistry - VDITS
The Virtual Dental Implant Training Simulation Program or VDITS is designed to help students in diagnostics, decision making and treatment protocols. However, its use is ultimately limited because VDITS is a fishbowl VR interface, not an immersive one - it expects participation via monitor screen, mouse and keyboard, rather than a full on virtual experience, at least at this stage.
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AR based Medical imaging technologies really began to take off in the early 2000s. There are a growing range of holographic, projective, interactive gesture recognition tools available, which can really make training and diagnosis so much easier.
Turning to VR to model Complex Structures in the Lung
 When struggling to understand a complex section of biology, researchers are increasingly turning to 3D modelling and VR interaction techniques and technologies in order to further our understanding of structures that continue to elude our science. This one for example, is a study of the pulmonary acinus, the cul-de-sac at the end of every mammalian lung.
Laerdal Medical 's third generation patient simulator mannequin was designed to be as realistic as possible, given 2009 technology levels.The SimMan 3G can cry, bleed, convulse, go into cardiac arrest, and produce symptoms of a myriad of common medical ailments.
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Simulation In A Virtual Combat Environment Puts Surgical Skills To The Test
A unique study by human factors/ergonomics researchers in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, has concluded that VR simulators may well be the best way to prepare surgeons for battlefield medicine, as it is ideal for creating a safe replica of the in high-stress, high-workload conditions combat zones present. Conditions which traditional training cannot replicate, and which often cause issues in medical staff encountering it live for the first time.
Surgical Simulators
In a strange twist of logic, endoscopic surgeons are starting to benefit from the technologies used in flight simulators. The task at hand is the development of a surgical simulator for minimally invasive surgery, that uses the standard endoscopic tools the surgeons would use in an actual surgery, and will use VR technology to add in full sensation.
The Healing Game
Picture an MMORPG just like the ones today, but everywhere you see combat, replace it with healing. A six-man encounter would be a surgical operation that required teamwork. Soloing would be a brilliant doctor doing drive-by diagnostics. Raids would be massive experimental treatments. - Raph Koster's brilliant ideas for a healing based MMO
Laerdal Medical 's third generation patient simulator mannequin was designed to be as realistic as possible, given 2009 technology levels.The SimMan 3G can cry, bleed, convulse, go into cardiac arrest, and produce symptoms of a myriad of common medical ailments.
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