Surgical Training in VR
Fundamental VR recently secured £20 million in series B funding to continue expanding their surgical training and medical education offerings in the immersive learning space. With the rocketing increase in costs associated with training new surgeons to serve a rapidly expanding global population, not to mention a lack of cadavers to practice on, the use of virtual reality to train people in procedures like cataract removal or hip replacements is proving to be invaluable.
The feeling of pushing a scalpel into the outer layers of an eyeball compared to sawing into bone are clearly very different. The brain uses this “haptic” information regarding how different tissues “push back” against the movements we make to make subtle adjustments in the pressure we apply in order to find that Goldilocks zone: not too much pressure (that might result in damaging nearby tissues), not too little (which would mean the procedure in question is not quite completed) but just right. So how do they solve this problem when most VR solutions involve waving hand-held motion controllers in mid-air, which obviously provides zero haptic feedback to the brain?
They use technology to provide the appropriate haptic feedback, technology that is carefully integrated with the immersive learning experience so that the trainee can see the instrument they are holding moving in the VR world, precisely as they really are moving in reality. This complement to traditional approaches to surgical training has proven so valuable in tests with students at NHS St George’s hospital that Fundamental Surgery now has official endorsement from the Royal College of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
This technology is also being endorsed by NGO’s like Orbis who provide surgical training in developing countries so that people with cataracts can be cured of their blindness. Cataract surgery is relatively straightforward compared to other types of surgery and yet it takes many hundreds of hours of practice until a surgeon can be unleashed on the armies of needy recipients. Training in virtual reality with the appropriate haptic feedback is a goldmine of opportunity that can enable trainee surgeons to practice over and over again at the touch of a button, without the need for cadavers, and without any threat of inexperienced surgeons inadvertently causing their patients harm. Getting this type of training out into the world means that more opthalmic surgeons can be trained up faster and with fewer associated costs; and each new surgeon means thousands of people retaining their vision under circumstances where they otherwise would have been rendered blind.
