VR technology developed in Montreal may rescue youngsters from fatalities
The World Health Organisation estimates that accidents claim the lives of one million youngsters annually.
Researchers in Montreal have created a virtual reality emergency room that might be used to teach medical professionals in Canada and across the globe how to save the lives of seriously wounded children.
According to estimates from the World Health Organisation, around one million children die each year as a result of trauma from incidents like automobile collisions, falls, and burns.
This is only the beginning, according to one of the founders of PeTIT VR, or Paediatric Trauma Innovative Training in Virtual Reality.
These are the nations that indicate that over six million children attend emergency departments each year for treatment due to paediatric trauma, according to Dr. Fabio Botelho, a Brazilian paediatric and trauma surgeon who works as a research fellow at Montreal Children’s Hospital.
He believes that extra training might increase a child’s chances of surviving an accident and recovering from their wounds.
PeTIT VR is the result of a collaboration between Botelho and UK-based i3 simulations and Dr. Dan Poenaru, the medical director of the trauma programme at Montreal Children’s Hospital.
They developed an immersive environment that was based after real-world scenarios to assist surgical teams, such as those at small or rural facilities, who do not often deal with paediatric trauma. As a result, the teams were able to refine their abilities and cooperate to grow better.
Every second counts when someone is being brought to the emergency room.
According to Botehlo, if the medical team follows all the protocols, the patient has the highest chance of living within the golden hour.
The hospital staff is unsure of how to respond when a youngster arrives with severe injuries. Additionally, there can be particular guidelines that apply to trauma in children because of the tiny size and age of these patients.
According to Botelho, children may find it challenging to comprehend the physiological and anatomical markers since an adult’s heart rate and range remain the same, while a child’s heart rate and range at age two differ from a child’s at age five and a teenager’s.
Physicians in rural areas of Canada and the globe may improve their individual and team skill sets using PeTIT VR. Training is available whenever and wherever it is required since neither travel nor the purchase of pricey medical mannequins is required.
Poenaru says that’s what gives him the greatest energy. He continued by noting that it is quite incredible to consider that he could be able to instruct all of these individuals while they are wearing $300 headsets in the comfort of their own homes.
Botelho and Poenaru demonstrated the device’s operation to CBC News while sporting headphones and controllers.
They go inside an actual emergency room complete with a patient, medical equipment, and sometimes a nervous parent.
In this instance, the directive is essentially given by Poenaru, the primary care physician. Using hand controls, they examine the patient by treating wounds, pointing to and obtaining syringes, and examining x-rays and ultrasounds.
Each scenario, in Poenaru’s opinion, is meant to evaluate the team’s capacity for cooperation and communication—two domains in which he contends there is a grave deficiency of medical training. They cooperate and communicate with one another much as in any online game. He remarked that after that, they might precisely evaluate the interactions, reflect on the interactions, and get invaluable data for input.
This is crucial, according to Dr. Ahmed Nasr, medical trauma director at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO).
Nasr, who is unrelated to the study, argues that medical illiteracy is not as significant as team dynamics when it comes to the efficacy of trauma treatment. Since PeTIT VR and other virtual reality systems enable remote communication, he views it as a significant improvement.
