iMedEd Release Notes 11.30.18

Future or Fad? Virtual Reality in Medical Education

In the latest phase of the iMedEd Initiative, the Division of Educational Technology has been actively exploring the potential uses of virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in medical education. Integration of the “We are Alfred” VR program by Embodied Labs was the team’s first successful foray into this area. Through a VR headset and hand-tracking device, “We are Alfred” enables a student to embody the experiences of a 74-year old African-American man with macular degeneration and high frequency hearing loss. In June 2017, this VR experience was included as a station in the Ambulatory Medicine Clerkship clinical exam for empathy and communication skills training. All third-year medical students on this clerkship in AY 2017-18 were able to participate in this experience with positive feedback. An Alzheimer’s patient experience by Embodied Labs was also piloted with all first-year medical students in March 2018.

Current efforts of the Division of Educational Technology are focusing on creating VR content to address local curricular needs. The first example of this is an empathy training scenario created using 360-video and a script developed by medical student, Mark Rupasinghe, MS3, that takes on the perspective of an English-speaking patient in a Vietnamese clinic to help inspire awareness of issues around culture and language barriers.

Watch the video below: (Note: This video is best viewed with a headset for full immersion. To experience in a browser on a laptop, use the navigation buttons to move around the scene. To experience on a mobile device, use the YouTube app.)

For more on this topic, read: Future or Fad? Virtual Reality in Medical Education from AAMCNews.

To learn more about VR and AR opportunities at the School of Medicine, contact Drs. Warren Wiechmann/Julie Youm at wiechmaw@uci.edu or jyoum@uci.edu.

 

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