Immersive Virtual Reality Environment for Dental Training

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Dental surgery is a complicated and dextrous skill which requires significant training and practice. Lack of effective training combined with time pressures and unrealistic targets on dentists leads to surgical complications and unsatisfied patients. Virtual reality (VR) has shown great potential in the field of dentistry as it provides a low cost approach for dental surgery simulation/training. A few UK universities currently use VR for dental training, however CURRENT technologies are limited; they cannot be used online, so students must still travel to the venue for training, and they follow traditional training procedures failing to exploit the potential of gamification to motivate students. To address the need for improved VR training solutions, HL will deliver a remote learning solution for Restorative & Aesthetic Dentistry (RAD) students (appropriate for any MSc or BSc covering aspects of RAD). The tech will implement the VR component into existing course material thus improving a state of the art and award winning learning programme. The VR content will be embedded into course material and designed specifically for remote learning, to be delivered to students using low cost consumer electronics (VR headsets costing £15-£30 are compatible with Smartphones ~£100). This will significantly extend the ‘population’ of dentists globally who are able to benefit from the education; help standardise and raise the quality of training; and help expose students to a wider range of treatment issues, more efficiently.