VR Education platform selected by virtual medical training app

Virtual reality technology company VR Education announced that its ‘ENGAGE’ platform has been selected by Life-saving Instruction for Emergencies (LIFE) on Thursday, which was launched at the Council of International Neonatal Nurses conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

The AIM-traded firm described LIFE as a VR medical training app developed by doctors, nurses and researchers at Oxford University and the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kenya, with support from hardware producer HTC, and VR Education.

It said LIFE would allow healthcare workers to enter a realistic 3D virtual hospital on their own smartphones or using a virtual reality headset, such as the HTC Vive.

Using the app, healthcare professionals would be able to practice life-saving skills on virtual patients, in a bid to ready them to act quickly and effectively in a real emergency.

In low-resource settings, access to simulation training could be difficult and expensive, VR Education explained, adding that using VR for training could “dramatically improve outcomes” by enabling more healthcare workers to receive high-quality training.

In 2017, the LIFE project won the 'VR for Impact' competition, sponsored by HTC, at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

It was now supported by a wide range of global health organisations, including the Wellcome Trust, Médecins Sans Frontières, USAID, DFID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The momentum from the win had enabled the LIFE team to create a new VR version of the LIFE app that runs on the ENGAGE platform, and used the new HTC VIVE Focus Plus headset.

VR Education said the VR version of LIFE followed the launch of the smartphone version in April.

The LIFE smartphone app was now being rolled out across Kenya through partnerships with medical and nursing schools, and professional organisations such as the Kenya Paediatric Association.

It said the platform had been extensively tested in beta, with thousands of healthcare workers already using the app on their smartphones.

“Operating via our versatile ENGAGE platform, LIFE has been designed to provide healthcare workers with universal access to high quality medical education and offers the potential to dramatically promote access to life-saving knowledge in developing nations,” said VR Education chief executive officer David Whelan.

“Working with leading medical experts at Oxford University and delivering real-world applications using immersive technology puts us at the forefront of scaling difficult to teach training scenarios such as medical training and this is a significant first step for VR Education.

“Supporting LIFE on a pro bono basis will increase awareness of our ENGAGE platform with medical professionals and students which we are confident will lead to enquiries from medical trainers seeking to host their own applications on the ENGAGE platform on a paid basis.”

Dr Chris Paton, the lead researcher for LIFE from the University of Oxford, added that the rapid adoption of smartphones by thousands of healthcare workers across Africa meant they now had the chance to access training that would have been too expensive using traditional face-to-face courses.

“By using immersive VR simulation training in combination with a personal smartphone app, the LIFE project has the potential to support healthcare worker training at scale.”

At 0801 GMT, shares in VR Education were down 4.71% at 6.67p.