VR-PE: Translating Front-line PPE Expertise to the Workplace Using Immersive Training

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The COVID-19 outbreak has forced many sectors to up-skill in complex areas of personal protective equipment (PPE) and hygiene, previously the domain of frontline medical environments. The care sector has been particularly badly effected due to a combination of factors including vulnerable/high risk clients, lower levels of training/expertise, high staff turn-over and limited resources for training.Virtual Reality (VR) (portable, quickly setup, convenient, unbounded workspace and content) has a unique role to play in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provide training where access is limited or problematic due to cost, loss of staff time (sending people to courses/having to cover multiple staff during group training) or risk (unnecessary social contact in training). VR based training is always 1:1, can be fit around schedules or when the opportunity arises, is easy to scale, provides detailed feedback and is engaging from start to finish unlike a video which may not hold a viewer's interest until the end. Yet, examples of VR in any UK response to Covid-19 training is limited.The team behind Titan-VR Ltd. have recently developed a Virtual Reality immersive solution for training healthcare staff in medical settings which involve COVID-19 patients. This was developed collaboratively with experts from Kings College Hospital and has allowed us to capture many years' experience working in front-line settings and distil that into an interactive module to help reinforce best practice, reducing the small errors which can have major consequences. This system is in use training staff and students and we are preparing to roll out across London and the UK.This valuable experience and captured expert knowledge, can be applied to almost sector which has been forced to introduce PPE procedures as a result of COVID-19\. We believe the next most important and urgent need is to translate this PPE expertise into the care sector (care homes and in-home care).In the VR-PE project we will work with teams from King's College Hospital to design, build and evaluate a modular platform for the rapid deployment of training interventions in the care sector which test appropriate decision making in realistic settings.