SBIR Phase II: Novel Tactile Online Nursing Trainer for Clinical Breast Exams

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is about a devastating medical error that affects millions of women, a breast cancer that can be felt by hand but remains unconfirmed and untreated for months or years. Known as missed, palpable breast cancer, the cause is plainly, lack of training and skill. The result is delayed diagnosis for millions of women and disease that is more extensive, painful, and costly. Poorly performed breast exams also result in unnecessarily high rates of false positive findings, which means ?detecting? disease that is not truly present. MammaCare scientists developed and standardized training and certification for nurses and physicians to perform proficient and effective breast exams. This training is taught by expert instructors who teach practitioners how to reliably detect small, suspicious breast tumors, about the size of a pea. However, this training is costly and time consuming. It cannot reach the thousands of nursing and medical students and practitioners who perform these exams. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to reduce the toll of breast cancer by giving all nurses who examine women the skill to detect the smallest, earliest signs of the disease. To do this we created a new skill-based teaching technology using high-fidelity breast models, computers and the Internet to provide practitioners with essential breast exam skills. The training is self-administered, inexpensive, and effective. Our colleagues at the Mayo Clinic found that nursing students and nurses were much more accurate in detecting breast tumors after the training than they were before receiving it. The potential benefits of this technology for millions of women are reduced medical errors, improved breast cancer screening accuracy, and a better chance for disease-free survival.