AI to improve safe medication delivery to patients - a cloud-based virtual reality initiative to unblock pharmacology training

传统上，护理和保健教育完全依赖于安置学习环境来发展知识和理解，并练习临床技能。随着学生人数的增加，课堂理论学习的中断，面向患者或基于临床的学习机会有限，沉浸式虚拟现实(VR)模拟可以弥合医学理论与临床实践之间的差距，节省教育资源，解决当前的培训瓶颈。该项目重点支持医学药理学实践，并通过使用基于虚拟现实的培训模拟和自然语言编程，针对不同的临床情景和给药路线，支持本科护生核心沟通和临床推理技能的发展。改善学习，为学生提供一个安全的环境，让他们练习技能，将有助于确保实习护士“适合实习”和“适合目标”。VREvo Ltd(英国)、Tetra Signum(韩国)、曼彻斯特大学(英国)和伍斯特大学(英国)旨在开发一个具有人工智能(AI)支持的沉浸式VR模拟的创新医学教育平台，使用先进的语音识别(自然语言处理)技术为医疗药理学的不同临床场景创建患者化身。这将包括开发和测试基于3个核心模拟的交互式和逼真的VR内容，以评估概念验证，并从包括讲师、培训师和护士学员在内的一系列用户那里获得反馈，并进行评估，以确定与当前教学方法相比，VR方法的可用性和可接受性。结合合作伙伴在临床技能开发方面的专业知识，创建用于医疗保健专业培训的VR模拟，以及先进医学教育工具的商业部署，将使全球高等教育医疗机构能够开发出商业可行的解决方案，以快速开发用于全球高等教育医疗机构的解决方案，促进包括发展中国家在内的世界任何地方的护士和其他医疗人员进行更高效、更具成本效益的培训。

Traditionally, nursing and healthcare education relied wholly upon placement learning environments to develop knowledge and understanding, and to practice clinical skills. With rising student numbers, disruption to classroom theoretical learning and limited access to patient-facing or clinic-based learning, immersive virtual reality (VR) simulations can bridge the gap between medical theory and clinical practice, save educational resources and address the current training bottleneck. This project focuses on supporting the practice of medical pharmacology, and the development of core communication and clinical reasoning skills in undergraduate student nurses through the use of VR-based training simulations with natural language programming for different clinical scenarios and drug administration routes. Improving learning and providing a safe environment in which students can practice skills, will help ensure that student nurses are 'fit for practice' and 'fit for purpose'. Outcomes will lead to better medicines management across the health service, improved patient safety and outcomes, and reduced healthcare costs.VREvo Ltd (UK), Tetra Signum (South Korea), The University of Manchester (UK) and University of Worcester (UK), aim to develop an innovative medical education platform with artificial intelligence (AI) supported immersive VR simulations using advanced voice recognition (Natural Language Processing) techniques to create patient avatars for different clinical scenarios in medical pharmacology. This will involve the development and testing of interactive and realistic VR content based around 3 core simulations to assess proof-of-concept, with feedback from a range of users including lecturers, trainers and student nurses, and an assessment to determine the usability and acceptability of the VR approach compared to current teaching methods.Combining the expertise of the partners in clinical skills development, the creation of VR simulations for healthcare professional training, and commercial deployment of advanced medical education tools, will enable the development of commercially-viable solutions for rapid exploitation to higher education medical institutes globally, facilitating more efficient and cost-effective training of nurses and other healthcare personnel anywhere in the world, including developing countries.