Avatars alive! The integration of physiology models and computer generated avatars in a multiplayer online simulation.
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2007-03-22
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In a mass casualty incident injured and at risk patients will pass through a continuum of care from many different providers acting as a team in a clinical environment As presented at MMVR 14 Kaufman et al 2006 formative evaluations have shown that simulation practice is nearly as good as and in some cases better than live exercises for stimulating learners to integrate their procedural knowledge in new circumstances through experiential practice However to date multiplayer game technologies have given limited physiological fidelity to their characters thus limiting the realism and complexity of the scenarios that can be practiced by medical professionals This paper describes the status of a follow on program to merge medical and gaming technologies so that computer generated but human controlled avatars used in a simulated mass casualty training environment will exhibit realistic life signs This advance introduces a new level of medical fidelity to simulated mass casualty scenarios that can represent thousands of injuries The program is identifying the critical instructional challenges and related system engineering issues associated with the incorporation of multiple state of the art physiological models into the computer generated synthetic representation of patients The work is a collaboration between Forterra Systems and the SUMMIT group of Stanford University Medical School and is sponsored by the US Army Medical Command s Telemedicine and Advanced Technologies Research Center TATRC