Introduction to the RadyVerse: A look at five VR and AI projects for training healthcare workers at the University of Manitoba's Rady Faculty of Health Sciences

As many of my readers already know, I work as a computer science and agriculture librarian at the Jim Peebles Science and Technology Library at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and write about “news and views on social VR.” , virtual worlds, and metaverse”(According to the tagline of the RyanSchultz.com blog:) From July 31, 2017. I have been actively and passionately reporting on this space on my blog for almost 7 years, sharing news and events in the rapidly evolving metaverse!

So, I already wrote a blog post (Although it is passing to some extent) describes the University of Manitoba School of Nursing, which has been training new nursing students using UbiSim software since the fall 2022 semester. Here's a one-minute YouTube video of the action:

But today I wanted to give you an update on some new innovations using VR (and AI!) in medical education at my employer, the University of Manitoba.

A month ago, on Friday March 15, 2024, I attended a special afternoon event held at the University of Manitoba's Bannatyne Campus (the Downtown Campus, a health sciences-focused campus next to the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's main hospital complex). . The event was the official launch of a new initiative by the Max Rady Department of Health Sciences, called RadyVerse. According to the announcement:

RadyVerse is an exciting initiative from the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences that combines virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence, and machine learning to create immersive, controlled simulations for students, educators, and clinicians. The goal of the integration is to empower the interprofessional community, foster collaboration, and enhance skill development in a risk-free environment.

In an article published in UM TodayIn the University of Manitoba's online newspaper, one of the event's speakers explained the purpose of the event and the benefits of using VR in nursing school programs.

Nicole Harder, Ph.D., associate dean for the College of Nursing, professor of undergraduate programs and Mindermar Professor of Human Simulation in the Rady School of Health Sciences, described the launch event as a “tech fair” to offer to faculty, staff and students. Opportunity to participate in interactive demonstrations.

“People will be able to put on a VR headset and enter an immersive world. We will also have monitors that will allow us to screencast what we see in VR and show it to other people and how this will be used as a teaching tool,” Harder said.

“VR has been used at other universities for a while, but not to the same extent. At the School of Nursing, this is included in our curriculum.”

The college recently expanded its VR simulation training to The Pas and Thompson programming through a partnership with University College of the North. This allows students from different parts of the region to work together on simulated clinical cases in one virtual space.

As more disciplines become involved, interprofessional teams may not even need to be in the same physical space to collaborate, Harder said.

“VR is a great tool for learning clinical decision-making, problem-solving, empathy, and communication.”

The launch event featured five stations to showcase how faculty are using virtual reality and artificial intelligence to educate and train the next generation of healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists and rehabilitation therapists. Journalists and members of the public were also invited to try out the technology for themselves and get a taste of how it works. The five stations are:

• The previously mentioned UbiSim VR software is used to train nurses in simulated but realistic nursing scenarios where students can practice their skills in a safe and controlled environment.
• Bodyswap, another initiative at the College of Nursing that provides experiential, soft skills training (such as how to talk to patients and families in a variety of scenarios);
• An artificial intelligence (AI) tool called OSCE GPT that simulates patients using specially trained large language models (LLMs) to help healthcare professionals practice their patient interviewing skills and provide feedback on how to improve.
• Lumeto, a social VR-based role-playing software that can be used by up to four users at a time, is used to train interprofessional collaboration skills in healthcare workers. and
• This is Acadicus (an educational VR program posted on the blog in 2019) used by Dr. Lawrence Gilman. According to UM Today article:

One of the stations was led by Dr. Dr. Max Rady, Associate Professor of Surgery at the Max Rady School of Medicine and Director of the Clinical Learning and Simulation Program at the Bannatyne Campus. It will be led by Lawrence Gillman.

Gillman is developing a crisis-based simulation and trauma resuscitation program that will soon be used to train residents. At the launch event, he will demonstrate what trainers and learners can do.

“This VR program is basically a playground where you can create your own simulation lab in a virtual environment. You can create any scenario or location you want and people can participate together in person or remotely,” Gillman said.

“Basically, we create a medical crisis where people can practice and make mistakes in a simulation rather than in real life.”

I had ample opportunity to visit all five workstations, test many of these applications firsthand, and talk with colleagues at the University of Minnesota about this project. In fact, in the video accompanying the CTV News report on the RadyVerse event, you can see Dr. Dr. Guts walking a user through the Acadicus software. You can also catch a glimpse of me standing behind Gillman (Check out the red arrow in the screen capture from that video.):

just doing nothing so A lot of exciting things are happening right now! Too many VR initiatives on campus are often happening in silos, which is unfortunate. For example, I wonder how many healthcare professionals at the time of RadyVerse's launch were aware that U-M Libraries was working to set up a VR lab that could be used by faculty, staff, and students (an initiative currently underway). It is said that the Computer Engineering Department also has plans to establish a VR lab for students. And I think the University's Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning is also working on VR. As I said, many It continues.

Therefore, I hope to use some of my own “soft skills” and abilities to help set up improved communication channels and venues at the university, so that we can all learn from each other as we work on our separate projects and programmes. . ! I believe there is a lot of expertise and experience within the company that we can share with each other. I know I will benefit from this and I think others will too. We can all learn from each other.

The RadyVerse event was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about other virtual reality and artificial intelligence work taking place at the University of Manitoba, and we look forward to reporting on future developments in this exciting educational technology as they unfold across campus. These are exciting times to be a VR and AI enthusiast at the University of Manitoba!