I was joined by Jack Pottle, co-founder of Oxford Medical Simulation, a VR simulation company to discussed augmented (aR) and virtual reality (VR) in healthcare simulation.  Jack started his career as a psychologist, and has now been a doctor in acute medicine for the last 7 years. He got involved in medical education through a FOAMed site he set up called Oxford Medical Education and over the last five years has been involved with simulation – first as a physical sim instructor, now in his role as co-founder and medical director of Oxford Medical simulation  

Jack took us on a deep dive – explaining exactly what is meant by the terms AR and VR, and helped us distinguish the hype around this technology from the true potential to improve training. 

We geeked out a little on how it works, but then talked about AR/VR is in healthcare simulation in 2018, ad where it’s going – and its certainly likely to be in a sim program near you very soon, if not already. Anatomy and procedural skills and obvious early applications, but communication skills and teamwork via multiplayer ‘games’ are on the horizon. 

Jack will be leading a panel on this topic at SEAM in Spain next week, and we look forward to more from him, and in this interesting field