Surgery simulators let medical students experience the adrenaline rush of a real operating room in a way that practicing on a cadaver cannot. Blood and guts aren't new to gaming, and simulators aren't new to training. But when the game is played on the human body, it offers exciting new opportunities for medical students to perfect their hand skills before they ever see their first patient. At the Center for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning at Stanford, the lowest-performing students in a surgery simulator outperformed the highest-ranked students trained by traditional means. In this panel, we will briefly look at the history of simulation training, explore some simulator interfaces, experience a demonstration of a surgery simulator, and allow (at least) one lucky audience member to put his or her hand on the virtual knife. Panelists will discuss how what we traditionally think of as a game environment can be used to dramatically improve the training surgeons receive, change how surgeons receive accreditation—and ultimately improve their performance in practice.
Former Austinite returns to the heart of Texas to spend a day fueling excitement around virtual reality and surgery simulation for digital masters and divas.
The rest of the year she designs experiences with a focus on providing customer utility, and leads a team of stellar designers who create innovative approaches to organizing and sharing information for clients like Intel, Wells Fargo and iShares. She is a volunteer for the Burning Man web team and the Golden Gate Parks Service, and enjoys long walks on the beach at sunset.
Frank Sculli is the co-founder and Informatics Director at BioDigital Systems, a medical IT and simulation firm based in New York City. He has extensive experience in the development of advanced web based information systems, and is actively investigating best practices for collecting and visualizing health record data in 3D environments. Most notably, Frank has been leading the development of the open source Caisis cancer data management project which was a finalist in the Microsoft Healthcare Innovation Awards, and has been heralded for its novel approach to storing and presenting a patient’s medical history. Prior to cofounding BioDigital, Frank worked in R & D at Honeywell, and later as an IT consultant to major organizations such as the Bank of New York, Pfizer and the Pennsylvania Treasury Department. Frank received his Bachelor’s from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Engineering from Columbia University.
John heads up visualization and animation production at BioDigital for clients in the device, pharmaceutical and communications industries. He is also a research assistant professor at the Division of Educational Informatics at NYU School of Medicine, where John works closely with radiologists, surgeons, and educators assisting in adding 3D models and animation into the medical school curriculum and physician training programs.
