Medical & Allied health education and training experience rapid changes. Various factors influence these changes, such as advancing clinical environment, changes in the role of health professionals, cutting-edge technologies in medical science, altered societal expectations, and diverse nature of educational methods.
Technology and healthcare have gone hand-in-hand for quite some time. Continuous advances in medical science and the pharmaceutical industry have allowed professionals to improve people’s health and save millions of lives worldwide. The primary goals of using technology in medical training are:
Health institutions use different technologies to streamline the learning processes and ensure better student outcomes. Today’s article will discuss the best technologies for medical training. Read on!
Virtual reality has gained popularity in recent years and has numerous applications in the medical and allied health fields. It improves the training process for students and allows them to view the human body in an interactive and immersive manner.
For instance, students can use virtual reality headsets to perform a medical procedure, such as diagnosing disease and carrying out an operation or examination. Virtual reality simulations designed for medical and allied health field students ensure a 3D immersive view of a patient’s body and a better understanding of a health condition, complications, and treatment.
In addition, virtual reality has massive potential in medical and allied health field training, particularly in courses like preventive healthcare, diagnostic imaging, assistive living, surgery, cancer therapy, and rehabilitation.
Augmented reality offers a realistic learning experience to medical and allied health field students. It supports complex healthcare learning by adding virtual content to the real world. The purpose is to improve the perception of reality and ensure students have better learning outcomes.
For instance, medical & allied health students can view a human skull and its different parts. Depending on the complexity of augmented reality applications, the 3D models generated by machine learning algorithms are interactive or animated.
So, students can analyze the skull’s anatomy, remove bones, and study different areas from all angles. Besides, apps based on augmented reality can recreate the entire body, organ systems, muscles, and tissue structures, allowing students to streamline the interactive learning process.
Integrated simulations combine a whole body, such as a manikin, with a computer-assisted simulation. For instance, integrated simulations allow the instructors and students to collaborate and manipulate various physiological parameters, such as respiratory movements and pulse rate.
These simulations also perform electrical outputs, such as monitoring readouts. Simulation centers use these simulators or processes as the core platforms, replicating functional surgical rooms, emergency departments, intensive care units, and patient rooms.
Personal digital assistants or PDAs are another medical and allied health training technology that improves the learning outcomes for healthcare students. Learners use PDAs for patient management, questions, resource sharing, and treatment decisions.
Most PDAs focus on physiology and anatomy, but some also address medical issues, perform diagnostics, and help learners find solutions.
The concept of gamification has dominated various industries, including the education sector. The application of gamification for training medical students is on the rise. For instance, serious games are excellent training tools that provide reliable and challenging stimulating environments for future surgeons.
The primary objective of serious games for surgical training is to improve reflexes and eye-hand coordination. Elder Quest is a serious game developed for geriatric care students. It is a role-playing game that challenges the player to locate a powerful wizard, “Gray Sage,” in poor health. Once found, the geriatric care student diagnoses the disease and provides the needed treatment.