World expert present in the closure of project dedicated to medical simulation

World expert present in the closure of project dedicated to medical simulation

The closing session of the project SIMPROVE – Medical Simulation Centre of the Future, which brought together FMUP, INESC TEC and the company STI-Medical, was attended by Guid Oei, professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands), an expert in the medical simulation area applied to Obstetrics and member of a consortium that won EUR 2.9 million for the development of an artificial uterus prototype.

10th January 2020

The closing session of the project SIMPROVE – Medical Simulation Centre of the Future, which brought together FMUP, INESC TEC and the company STI-Medical, was attended by Guid Oei, professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands), an expert in the medical simulation area applied to Obstetrics and member of a consortium that won EUR 2.9 million for the development of an artificial uterus prototype and João Bernardes, President of the Department of Gynecology-Obstetrics and Pediatrics of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto.

At the event, entitled "From Simulation to Virtual Reality in Healthcare Education and Training", held on 29 November at FMUP, the results of a project with the participation of the Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics (CSIG) were presented, which aims at contributing to the development of medical education and to the medical training in using virtual reality and digital games applied to clinical simulation.

During the session, in which the coordinator of CSIG, António Gaspar participated, the debate on the potential of simulation and virtual reality in the acquisition and improvement of healthcare professionals' skills was raised and a technical demonstration was held by the members of the SIMPROVE team, Carla Sá Couto (FMUP), Rui Nóbrega, João Costa and Filipe Rodrigues (INESC TEC) and Hugo Machado (STI MEDICAL).

In this consortium, which is led by STI Medical, INESC TEC designed an integrated solution for simulation of clinical scenarios through a modular system that allows to interact through multiplayer systems of digital games or with a virtual reality interaction system. A clinical scenario editor was also designed using FMUP's simulation experience to edit and to create new scenarios and serious games.

This type of games and simulators will improve the training of healthcare professionals, empowering training and creating a record of actions taken when the exercise is performed in a group.

The SIMPROVE project began in March of 2017 and was funded with EUR 1.1 million by the Norte2020 programme.

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC.