How to improve continuing medical education with VR
Improving Continuing Medical Education with VR
In recent years, a large number of start-up companies have emerged that improve medical education, surgical training, clinical rotations and residency interviews.
While medical education has felt stagnant since the 20th century, a new group of companies wants to make it more efficient, effective and affordable.
Thousands and thousands of doctors and nurses graduate each year around the world, do internships during their respective careers, quite long especially in the case of doctors, and all of them, graduates and workers who are already practicing their profession, continue to be trained continuously throughout their careers.
It is a profession, a sector, that of health and medicine, in which constant training is key, and whose system has been anchored in the past for too long.
As you can imagine, with so many health workers to train each year, the medical education market is huge.
The value of the medical education sector today is indisputable, and projections for the future are rising.
Despite its size and importance, medical education has not changed much in recent decades. The skyrocketing costs of tuition for future doctors and nurses could be the sector’s biggest and most important change in that period.
While medical education has felt stagnant since the 20th century, a new group of companies wants to make it more efficient, effective and affordable.
In this article, we will look at what these companies are doing and the kind of impact they are having.
How will medical education improve?
When doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other health care professionals receive better clinical education, everyone else receives better care. And, most people around the world want to improve the quality of care they receive.
Several companies have realized that they can improve medical education by making better content for students to learn and study with. Here’s a look at the major companies that do just that:
Osmosis is a medical education platform that helps future doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other health care professionals learn and retain all the health science information they need to do their jobs effectively. The company offers access to a library with more than 1,300 videos, 15,000 cards and 8,000 case questions covering topics such as pathology, physiology, pharmacology and clinical reasoning. More than 600,000 people use the Osmosis learning platform and 1.2 million use the YouTube channel to enhance their clinical education.
GIBLIB publishes medical conferences and surgical procedures from academic medical centers such as the Mayo Clinic, Stanford Children’s Hospital and Cedars-Sinai, allowing anyone to learn from the world’s best physicians. It also offers VR-based medical education content, including the first accredited VR continuing medical education course.
ReelDx allows medical students to learn from over 700 “real patient videos” covering more than 700 cases and over 1,000 topics. The company suggests that by giving students access to real patient case videos, they will become more engaged and better able to retain what they learn. Clients of the service include Vanderbilt University School of Nursing and the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Medlantis extracts thousands of hours of medical lectures and case studies to help doctors and other health professionals find the most relevant content. People can use Medlantis content as a supplement to their college courses or for continuing medical education.
Coursera, a large education technology company that has raised more than $210 million, recently launched a health education program. It is launching more than 100 health-focused courses in 2019 and has opened enrollment for two public health degrees - from the University of Michigan and Imperial College London - that can be completed online. With this content, Coursera hopes to address the health worker shortage.
Simlab IT: Creating VR/AR/360 video lessons to simulate situations for staff and students can be very useful in the learning process. It can also be problematic. SimLab IT solves this problem by centralizing all the technology needed to create these lessons on an easy-to-use online platform that is shared among universities, governments, NGOs, and businesses alike.
Education Management
Several start-up companies have made it their mission to streamline medical education operations and improve access to high-quality opportunities in the field.
The American Medical Association predicts that by 2030 there will be a shortage of between 42,600 and 121,300 physicians in the United States. At the same time, a 2017 study associated with the World Health Organization estimates that there will be a shortage of 15 million health care workers worldwide by 2030. Already in 2006, the World Health Organization believed that there was a global shortage of 4.6 million doctors, nurses and other health professionals.
AMOpportunities wants to address this problem by partnering with medical education programs to provide clinical rotations for international medical students. With AMOpportunities, programs can screen international applicants for credentials and open up an additional source of income. International students who want to eventually practice medicine in the United States can work with AMOpportunities to gain the clinical experience they need to join U.S. residency programs. It’s a win-win situation.
On the operational side, the Thalamus simplifies the medical residency and interview process for institutions and students. Residency and fellowship programs use the Thalamus to establish their availability for interviews; the product then allows students to self-schedule these meetings. The product makes it easier for programs to manage all of their interviews and communicate with applicants. After booking an interview, students can also use the Thalamus to book their travel.
Medtrics is another start-up that wants to streamline the operations of the residency program. Specifically, its product helps residence managers and leaders on board new residents track ACGME milestones, manage IRIS billing, record work hours, track event attendance, distribute performance evaluations, and more. The company also offers solutions for undergraduate medical education and nursing education program management.
Simlab IT: Simlab IT specializes in developing many forms of Virtual and Augmented Reality to create the perfect environment for 21st Century students. Specializing in many forms of coding for web, mobile, and desktop, their online platform allows for customized educational lessons to adapt any type of curriculum to Virtual Reality.
Simply log in to our online platform and make your own lesson anytime, anywhere. Use the pre-built system to create your own customized environment and if that’s not enough, upload your own models/videos/other content into the system for added flexibility. The SimLab computing platform allows for the creation and simulation of streaming while collecting performance data. We offer many forms of basic and custom data collections and less about customization. The platform can collect data such as emotional voice data, playback data, question answers, and more.
Other opportunities to improve medical education
While the start-up companies described in this article are doing their part to improve medical education, other opportunities exist. New York University made waves when it announced that it would provide free tuition to all students who join its medical school.
But the cost of medical school for the vast majority of students who do not receive full scholarships is staggering. There is an opportunity for companies that can offer more attractive financing options to medical students and better align incentives between them and lenders. The Lambda School of Medical Education seems far away; however, a revenue-sharing financing option for medical students could ease some of the financial burdens they face.
Residency programs are another aspect of medical education that could use a dose of innovation. Hospitals expect residents to work unbearable hours - one study found that on average the residents they surveyed had to work approximately four extended shifts per month lasting 32 hours each. The residents included in the study also had to work their regular shifts each week.
The physical and mental toll that this intense schedule can take is severe. At the same time, most residency programs pay a relative pittance compared to the significant debt that new doctors accumulate during school. Medscape’s report on resident wages and debt in 2018 found that the average resident earned $59,300.
What does a “healthy” residency program look like, and how can residents receive fair compensation for their work? The answers to these questions may contain promising ideas for getting started.
The conclusion
As you will have seen in this article, a number of companies such as AMOpportunities, Osmosis, GIBLIB, Thalamus and Simlab IT are working to improve medical education, surgical training, clinical rotations and the residency interview process. That said, several issues such as the high cost of medical school and the strenuous pace of residencies have yet to be addressed.
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