Lucid Reality Labs with Medtronic VR Exposition at SFAR 2021
Author: Alex Dzyuba, Lucid Reality Labs Founder & CEO
On September 23, 2021 the French Society of Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Perioperative Medicine (SFAR) annual congress opened its doors at the Palais des Congrès at Porte Maillot in Paris. The SFAR is the number one French community that unites anaesthesiologists-Intensivists nationwide. Held from September 23rd until 25th, the national congress has been bringing together over 6000 participants, 700 presentations and 600 e-posters every year covering the topics of resuscitation, anesthesia and perioperative medicine.
SFAR helps advance healthcare directions like anaesthesia, intensive care, pain management, emergency medicine and perioperative medicine, actively promoting the anaesthetist direction from clinical, scientific and educational perspectives. The organization provides tools, guidelines, research support and journals, aiming to aid both anaesthesiologists and nurses.
In the conference opening speech, held by the president of France Emmanuel Macron, he expressed his pride and gratitude to the doctors, caregivers and particularly resuscitators-anesthesiologists, for radically rethinking the organization, coordinating nationwide activities with peers in order to deliver and ensure critical care where required. Recognizing the essential role of resuscitators-anesthesiologists and the ability to drastically increase the capacity over a matter of months, adapting and pushing the boundaries by creating positions and skills, innovating and creating new protocols so necessary to manage the crisis.
Lucid Reality Labs team has taken part in the exposition to support the VR experience developed with Medtronic, an interactive and immersive VR intubation simulation experience created to demonstrate the product and to train practitioners and medical students. It presents the usage of the McGRATH™ MAC video laryngoscope as standard of care by educating participants on how to perform an intubation procedure with a variety of patients and complexity of intubation scenarios.
The immersive simulation provides a great opportunity for medical specialists and students to enhance their skills and get new experiences in a realistic way. It also provides an opportunity to train remotely and safely with maximum impact. The McGRATH™ MAC VR Intubation Simulation submerges users into a 3-dimensional operating room (OR) including equipment and sounds. The VR experience blurs the boundaries of the tactile barrier allowing users of any age to fully immerse into the experience within 2 minutes, as one steps into the OR to experience being in the OR and have the exact sensation of a real intubation process.
Virtual Reality experiences are becoming more of a commodity in the healthcare industry today, serving as an excellent tool to extend and demonstrate products or equipment. They allow to submerge users into close to real life environments, enhancing the physical hands-on experiences with the virtual surroundings.
Specialists of all levels, knowledge and age groups were able to interact with the VR experience, choosing to submerge after or before they explored the actual physically available McGRATH™ MAC video laryngoscope. The VR experience received excellent feedback, with participants pointing out that it is a great education and training tool that allowed them to follow the correct steps, helping motorically remember the correct device use and sequence as well as increase the speed at which they were able to perform the procedure. The immersion allowed participants to experience the intubation process from the very beginning till the very end, live through the entire scenario and react to certain intubation situations and patient needs.
Medical conferences of such level not only bring specialists together, but help accelerate the innovation and foster knowledge exchange. It is exciting to see that VR technology is accelerating innovation, helping healthcare industry specialists develop new skills and expand their knowledge, in order to have a positive impact on the lives of millions worldwide.
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