TITAN: Targeted Immersive Training at NHS Nightingale

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Emergency preparedness training is fundamental to success in a pandemic such as COVID-19. The NHS Nightingale London provides a fresh challenge to large-scale healthcare-related training. Unusually to healthcare, it has brought together professionals from wide ranging medical disciplines in a short period of time for a singular purpose. A replica of the Nightingale was created at the O2 Arena to address these training needs. Educators stationed at the Nightingale aim to train the workforce in COVID-specific competencies.Inevitably, the speed and unpredictable nature of an emergency means the quality, realism and range of procedures that can be supported through training is limited.Virtual Reality (VR) technologies which are portable, setup quickly and easily modifiable could provide unique training opportunities in emergency situations, yet VR has not featured in any UK response to COVID-19 training. Although it has been used in clinical education for over 10 years, uses thus far are bespoke.We are working with teams from NHS Nightingale London, King's College Hospital and King's College London to design and build a modular (software and hardware) platform for the rapid deployment of targeted training interventions in emergency situations.We will use the emergency need for training to inform the design of tools and requirements as we implement carefully selected training scenarios to complement existing training, reducing staff and consumable burden. A major area of which has been highlighted is the need for solutions to the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) shortage, which is amplified through its use in training.The overall project ambition is that, eventually, creating a 3D training scenario using our toolkit should be equivalent in technical competency and time to creating PowerPoint 2D training materials.Equally, deployment should be simple, scalable and meet all necessary health and safety requirements (e.g. contagion control and decontamination).While we will focus on the needs of NHS Nightingale in the first instance, the effects of COVID-19 (along with other infectious diseases) will likely continue to have a worldwide impact for many years to come. Our vision is to use the outputs of this project and our learning through working with the NHS Nightingale team to create a rapidly deployable and customisable VR training solution that can be put in "on the ground" right where training needs to take place. Thereby enabling the support of e.g. inexperienced volunteers during a Lassa Fever outbreak in Nigeria or a field hospital in a conflict zone.**Extension for Impact**The additional funding and time provided by the extension will allow us to take this project significantly further towards commercialisation. We will be able to:* Run a second pilot at a different NHS trust to demonstrate wider applicability and gather more data/feedback * Actively explore an advertising/sponsorship model through a targeted marketing activity to make training free at point of use* Build out our business plan and supply chain strategy* Continue our collaboration with teams at KCH/KCL to ensure the product has the maximum chance of a successful launch