Why AR in Medical Schools?
Field of medicine is where a lot of complex learning occurs. It requires medical students to master the competencies that will ultimately enable them to perform occupational activities while meeting the standard expected in the professional environment. This requires medical students to learn and experience all possible variation before jumping into the profession. Medical students need meaning learning where it guarantees meaning learning to occur. That is why in today’s medical schools, students are given a mixture of workplace learning environment and ample time for individual practice.
Traditionally, medical students are normally assigned to one cadaver to perform the different medical procedure for the duration of one year or even for their entire time as a student. This means that time and opportunity of students are quite limited. This is where educational AR applications can help students to learn more deeply and virtually the human anatomy and even perform a clinical examination. |
Case Study and Discussion
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Case Western Reserve University has recently made a partnership with Microsoft which is allowing the Faculty of Medicine to incorporate HoloLens into their instruction. HoloLens is an AR headset that projects interactive hologram that overlays on top of the real environment. Technology like HoloLens is the next step in AR technology, which is being widely adopted by medical schools around the world.
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Currently Used Apps / Programs in Higher Education
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Complete Anatomy, created by 3D4Medical, is an US-Ireland Research Innovation Award winning application that is one of the most widely used medical apps by doctors and medical students. The App comes with AR function that allows users to use mobile devices like phones and tables to view human anatomy , "with incredible levels of anatomical accuracy and high fidelity textures" (“Complete Anatomy 2019”). Students are no long using textbooks to study human anatomy in 2D. What is also surprising about this App is that it comes with lectures from professional doctors allowing students to take control over their learning. On top of that, students can create their own work to share with peers that allows collaboration for meaningful learning.
*Free version available now |
Accuvein, is an Augmented Reality device that helps medical students and nursing students to locate veins under the surface of human skin by projecting an image. Its main focus is to help and teach venipuncture, which is one of the most common medical procedure with 2.7 million procedures performed every day just in United States alone. The devices helps student with training in IV starts and blood draws which can be frustrating and time consuming for many. It has also been reported that doctors and nurses today misses vein 40% of the time on the first stick ("The Medical Futurist"). Accuvein teaches students to be more accurate with their procedure, thus giving them confident and enhanced knowledge of vasculature and of venipuncture procedures.
* Device, Not an APP |
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Page Author: Heeweon Joo