Virtual Manikins Challenging Traditional Medical Simulation

simxvr_admin
Sep 19, 2023

SimX is completely changing the way healthcare providers undergo simulation training. For decades, patient manikins have evolved to incorporate varying degrees of sophistication paired with back-end technology to enhance the simulation experience. While effective, they require a significant initial investment and comprehensive staff training and maintenance costs. But, the days of storing a sea of silicone body parts as the only option to teach the next generation of healthcare workers are gone. Now, with the SimX Virtual Manikin Series, simulation instructors have another way to truly create easy, cost-effective, high-fidelity patient encounters.

While high-fidelity manikins have come a long way when it comes to realism, they are still severely limited. For example, it is impossible for a medical manikin to emulate neurological deficits such as unilateral weakness or dynamic facial droop. A manikin cannot break out with urticaria or a desquamating rash. You’ll never have a manikin pacing around the room while trying to sign out of your hospital against medical advice or have an eclamptic seizure followed by severe uterine bleeding. The inflexible nature of manikins means they’ll never reach the level of realism required to truly recreate a clinical patient encounter.

Along with the manikins themselves, traditional medical simulation also requires a vast number of associated medical tools and devices. By the time you scavenge ventilators, chest tubes, medication vials, drapes, cardiac monitors, code carts, etc., you realize the cost of a fully simulated environment. In VR, learners can use any tool necessary for any patient. Additionally, learners have immense freedom to assess patients, find the right tools, and experience various virtual environments.

What is the SimX Virtual Manikin Series?

In contrast with traditional medical manikins, the SimX Virtual Manikin Series is a customizable collection of simulated patient encounters that allows educators to select patient avatars, environments, and scenario outcomes to create unique simulations. Unlike traditional manikins, the virtual manikin can respond to and interact with learners to better gain true-to-life clinical experience. Unlike physical manikins, the Virtual Manikin can be deployed in less than 5 minutes.

What Virtual Manikin scenarios are available now?

Two Virtual Manikin scenarios are currently available worldwide: one focuses on pediatric pathologies and the other on adults with chest pain-related complaints. More Virtual Manikin subtypes are in development and will be available on the SimX Marketplace as they are finalized, tested, and integrated into the series.

How can I customize the scenario?

All scenarios in the Virtual Manikin Series can be customized in real time to meet the needs of educators and learners. With the Virtual Manikins, instructors can customize and control:

  • Patient appearance (demographic, age, and gender)
  • Encounter location
  • Patient vitals
  • Patient animations
  • Lab and imaging results
  • Physical exam findings
  • Patient and non-player character (NPC) dialogue
  • The final diagnosis

The SimX Virtual Manikin series includes a revolutionary scenario preset feature where instructors can create and save custom patient findings, diagnoses, vitals, and patient animations. Presets can be saved to the instructor’s SimX profile and later reused for more efficient training sessions. To get you started, each Virtual Manikin scenario includes a handful of SimX-authored preconfigured presets for quick and easy simulation training based on realistic patient encounters.

Why Virtual Manikins?

Unlike traditional silicone and plastic manikins, patients in Virtual Reality can be made to reflect realistic demographics with varying symptoms, physical exam findings, and psychosocial stressors. Rather than a static body on a table, learners interact with dynamic characters to gain and retain knowledge. The easy-to-use design of the SimX virtual manikin series allows you to invest your time where it really belongs: in learning, practicing, and improving essential life-saving skills.

Want to learn more?

See the SimX Virtual Manikin series in action and contact a [email protected] today to set up a free demo.

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