The Immerse Global Summit (IGS) 2022 Miami continues to showcase companies in the virtual, augmented, mixed and extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR) space. Some of the world’s largest institutions in XR medicine, defense, education and entertainment debuted and showcased their latest immersive solutions.
Case Western Reserve University, a world-renowned medical institution, joined the event to reveal how it leveraged Microsoft’s MR tools by combining them with its educational software platform.
XR Today spoke to Nancy Farrow, Executive Director of HoloAnatomy & HoloNeuroAnatomy Global Software Suite at Case Western Reserve University.
She educates medical schools and universities around the world on her institution’s immersive app, which runs on Microsoft’s HoloLens platform.
HoloLens for XR medical training
Nancy Farrow, Executive Director of the Global HoloAnatomy & HoloNeuroAnatomy Software Suite at Case Western Reserve University
Farrow said his medical school, one of the top 25 institutions in the United States, developed a new facility in 2014. Rather than create a traditional dissection lab to teach anatomy, his organization considered products spatial computing readily available in 2015.
The company explored 3D modeling and printing, and later Microsoft released its first-generation HoloLens back then. After trying out the headset, the “lights went on” and company visionary Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, MD discovered that such platforms would become the future.
Speaking further, she said,
“We chose MR because we believe medicine is like a sports team. It differs from virtual reality, which is more of an independent and individual self-learning experience. When you are with a teacher and teammates and students in the same environment, or even remotely, you interact together. Second, it’s because students and faculty got motion sickness with virtual reality and mixed reality kept them from feeling those experiences.
Speaking about the benefits for students, Farrow explained that “students were engaged from day one”.
She added: “What we have also learned is that their commitment remains persistent. They want to learn and keep learning, and the excitement is always there.
The executive added that students in XR medical labs are learning as well or better than in traditional dissection labs. The university also found that medical students learned twice as fast, allowing them time for other activities. Students could also reduce their dissection time to about two hours while diagnosing standardized patients and reading radiological imaging at the same time.
She continued, “This is how we train better and future doctors.”
She also cited an article noting that students also retained 40-50% more information than with traditional learning methods, even eight months after the virtual course.
IGS and the future of XR training
Speaking about her experiences at IGS 2022 Miami, Farrow said the event allowed her company to show what she had accomplished in a very short time as well as her plans for the next five years.
Explaining, she said,
“I think the XR world is really going to engage not just in education and in medical schools, but also in high schools. Hopefully hardware prices will come down and become more available, because that’s where we really need to start. [Starting] in high school, XR can engage students and encourage them to pursue their passion, be it medicine, nursing, or any other type of industry, and also stay in the professional and educational worlds”
She concluded that she was happy to see growing developments in immersive enterprises amidst the “third wave” of computing, citing comparative moments in history when computing devices and mobiles began as devices. bulky, but then evolved into the modern smartphone.
She concluded, “It won’t just be for games or entertainment. This is how we are going to teach our next generation and how we will do virtually everything over the next five to ten years.
IGS 2022 Miami took place December 5-7 at the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. Many of the world’s biggest tech giants including Meta Platforms, Sony, Agora, HTC VIVE, Unity Technologies, Qualcomm, Magic Leap, Lenovo and many more joined the event.
Key executives from their respective companies participated in three days of panel discussions, keynotes, workshops and product launches.
#Training #Major #Boost #Learner #Outcomes #CWRU #Director #Today