Program Leader: Steven Dawson, MD
CIMIT’s Simulation Program is creating high-tech machinery to
use in training medical practitioners and caregivers. Patient care provided
will be safer, whether it’s provided by the battlefield medic, the
hospital resident, or the experienced surgeon learning a new procedure.
Clinical Problem: Provide realistic training tools so inexperienced
clinicians without need to practice painful, risky procedures on patients,
and can improve skills and reduce medical errors.
CIMIT Solutions:
- A physiologically realistic mannequin for training first responders to
perform chest tube insertion and prevent a leading cause of trauma deaths.
- A mechanical system to train surgeons to perform laparoscopic surgery.
- An interactive, full body-trauma casualty system (computer programmed
to behave autonomously and spontaneously) to provide realistic training
for army medics.
The Simulation group’s work has created a suite of training prototypes.
Although its support comes from the Department of Defense, they have designed
each system for maximal use capability to increase the impact across the
healthcare continuum to include civilians as well; the team has created prototypes
for both combat casualty care and dual use trainers for non-traumatic conditions,
including:
- VIRGIL, a chest trauma training system for combat medics, teaches proper
care of tension pneumothorax, hemothorax and pneumothorax, using realistic
anatomy in a visually advanced training curriculum. VIRGIL won the Army’s
Top Ten Greatest Inventions Award in 2003, the first medical project to
be so awarded.
- CELTS, a laparoscopic skills training system, was the first system to
use integrated metrics derived from actual surgical practice and produces
a real-time html compatible score for every user.
- SITU, a straightforward, realistic smallpox innoculation training system
that accurately replicates the feel and responses of traditional smallpox
innoculation. SITU was used to train military medical corps during 2003.
- EVE (under development), a physics-based endovascular simulator for training
in the treatment of stroke and other intracranial vascular events. EVE
follows on our initial success with the ICTS system which was created in
the 1990’s and is widely used for cardiology, vascular surgery and
radiology training.
- COMETS (under development), an autonomous, ruggedized, self-powered waterproof
full body trauma training system that responds to user actions with continuos
feedback.
To provide more varied training in more disciplines, the SIM Group is working
on a generalized endovascular training system that will permit catheter-therapy
training for radiologists, cardiologists, vascular surgeons and others who
perform minimally invasive vascular therapies.
The SIM Group continues to draw upon multidisciplinary
expertise to design and develop medical simulators. Their work makes possible
a new era of medical
practice when students, residents, and physicians will “practice
medicine” without
putting patients at risk.
