AI to improve safe medication delivery to patients - a cloud-based virtual reality initiative to unblock pharmacology training

Traditionally, nursing and healthcare education relied wholly upon placement learning environments to develop knowledge and understanding, and to practice clinical skills. With rising student numbers, disruption to classroom theoretical learning and limited access to patient-facing or clinic-based learning, immersive virtual reality (VR) simulations can bridge the gap between medical theory and clinical practice, save educational resources and address the current training bottleneck. This project focuses on supporting the practice of medical pharmacology, and the development of core communication and clinical reasoning skills in undergraduate student nurses through the use of VR-based training simulations with natural language programming for different clinical scenarios and drug administration routes. Improving learning and providing a safe environment in which students can practice skills, will help ensure that student nurses are 'fit for practice' and 'fit for purpose'. Outcomes will lead to better medicines management across the health service, improved patient safety and outcomes, and reduced healthcare costs.

VREvo Ltd (UK), Tetra Signum (South Korea), The University of Manchester (UK) and University of Worcester (UK), aim to develop an innovative medical education platform with artificial intelligence (AI) supported immersive VR simulations using advanced voice recognition (Natural Language Processing) techniques to create patient avatars for different clinical scenarios in medical pharmacology. This will involve the development and testing of interactive and realistic VR content based around 3 core simulations to assess proof-of-concept, with feedback from a range of users including lecturers, trainers and student nurses, and an assessment to determine the usability and acceptability of the VR approach compared to current teaching methods.

Combining the expertise of the partners in clinical skills development, the creation of VR simulations for healthcare professional training, and commercial deployment of advanced medical education tools, will enable the development of commercially-viable solutions for rapid exploitation to higher education medical institutes globally, facilitating more efficient and cost-effective training of nurses and other healthcare personnel anywhere in the world, including developing countries.