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实习学习环境来发展知识和理解，并实践临床技能。随着学生人数的增加，课堂理论学习的中断以及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，节省教育资源并解决当前的培训瓶颈。本项目旨在通过基于vr的自然语言编程培训模拟，针对不同的临床场景和给药途径，支持本科护士的医学药理学实践，以及核心沟通和临床推理技能的发展。改善学习和提供一个安全的环境，让学生可以练习技能，将有助于确保学生护士“适合实践”和“适合目的”。结果将改善整个医疗服务部门的药物管理，改善患者安全和结果，并降低医疗成本。VREvo Ltd（英国）、Tetra Signum（韩国）、曼彻斯特大学（英国）和伍斯特大学（英国）旨在开发一个创新的医学教育平台，该平台采用人工智能（AI）支持沉浸式VR模拟，使用先进的语音识别（自然语言处理）技术，为医学药理学的不同临床场景创建患者头像。这将涉及基于3个核心模拟的交互式和现实VR内容的开发和测试，以评估概念验证，并获得包括讲师，培训师和学生护士在内的一系列用户的反馈，并评估VR方法与当前教学方法相比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，为医疗保健专业培训创建虚拟现实模拟，以及先进医学教育工具的商业化部署，将能够开发商业上可行的解决方案，供全球高等教育医疗机构快速利用，促进对世界各地（包括发展中国家）的护士和其他医疗保健人员进行更有效和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.