Feinberg
Northwestern Medicine | Northwestern University | Faculty Profiles

News Center

  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Home » Incorporating Virtual Reality Into Medical Education
Education News

Incorporating Virtual Reality Into Medical Education

By Anna WilliamsNov 29, 2018
Share
Facebook Twitter Email
A recent lecture led by Patricia Garcia, MD, MPH, ’91 GME, associate dean for curriculum, (left) discussed how augmented, virtual and mixed reality might play a role in medical education.

“Are we ready to learn in three dimensions?” posed Patricia Garcia, MD, MPH, ’91 GME, associate dean for curriculum, during a recent lecture that explored the budding use of augmented, virtual and mixed-reality media in medical education.

The Today’s Innovations in Medical Education (TIME) lecture, held November 20, was attended by Feinberg faculty, students and staff. TIME, sponsored by the Feinberg Academy of Medical Educators (FAME), is a monthly lecture series dedicated to highlighting technological advances, new pedagogy and best practices in health professions education.

During her lecture, Garcia clarified the differences between augmented (AR), virtual (VR) and mixed (MR) realities, shared examples of current tools and their potential applications in medical education, and suggested the need for an ongoing discussion about the use of such technology at Feinberg.

Audience members explored some of the mixed reality tools Garcia and Salisbury discussed, including MERGE Cube.

“We’re not at all saying that we should definitely do this. But the question I pose to everybody here is, what can you imagine doing with the technology if it were available to use?” said Garcia, also a professor of Medical Education and of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. “We want you to begin to think about whether or not there’s an application of this technology in the learning environments that you create.”

Garcia was introduced by Walter Eppich, MD, MEd, director of FAME and associate professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Emergency Medicine and of Medical Education.

Joining Garcia was Rick Salisbury, associate director of educational technologies at the Kellogg School of Management, who helped demonstrate a number of new tools for the audience. Using the Microsoft HoloLens — an augmented reality headset — and an app called “Insight Heart,” Salisbury conjured a beating heart into the lecture hall space.

Garcia demonstrated the use of the inexpensive MERGE Cube, a holographic appliance that can work with anatomy apps on a smartphone to produce virtual images, such as a brain or the lymphatic system.

Garcia also shared the first application of AR/VR technology at Feinberg: a neurosurgery virtual reality program created by Michael Walsh, MD, a health system clinician in Neurological Surgery. Inspired by his children’s love of VR games, Walsh created a “flythrough” of the base of the skull using CT scans. He now uses the program to help teach skull-based anatomy to residents and fellows.

Garcia and audience member Russell Horowitz, MD, associate professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Emergency Medicine, during a demo of the Microsoft HoloLens.

“It’s not just anatomy that virtual reality is affecting,” said Garcia, who led the development and implementation of Feinberg’s new curriculum in 2012. “The possibilities are really extraordinary.”

During the lecture, Garcia also provided preliminary data on learning outcomes from a few uses of VR in medical education at other institutions.

“We need to better understand the impact of this. We need to engage in more scholarly activity before deploying this just for the sake of deploying it,” Garcia said. “But we’ve got to start somewhere — it’s clearly the wave of education in the future.”

Education Medical Education Students
Share. Facebook Twitter Email

Related Posts

Sex-Specific Mechanisms for Major Depressive Disorder Identified in Response to Dysregulated Stress Hormones

Mar 23, 2023

AOA Honors New Members

Mar 20, 2023

Celebrating Feinberg’s 2023 Match Day

Mar 17, 2023

Comments are closed.

Latest News

Investigating Protein’s Role in Hearing Loss

Mar 27, 2023

Sex-Specific Mechanisms for Major Depressive Disorder Identified in Response to Dysregulated Stress Hormones

Mar 23, 2023

Pre-Surgery Immunotherapy May Increase Survival in Advanced Melanoma

Mar 23, 2023

Hormone Therapy Plus Current Treatments Improves Survival in Prostate Cancer

Mar 22, 2023

How ChatGPT Has, and Will Continue to, Transform Scientific Research

Mar 21, 2023
  • News Center Home
  • Categories
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
  • News Archives
  • About Us
Flickr Photos
20230317_NM651
20230317_NM610
20230317_NM569
20230317_NM537
20230317_NM331
20230317_NM323
20230317_NM316
20230317_NM336
20230317_NM626
20230317_NM662
20230317_NM655
20230317_NM642

Northwestern University logo

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

RSS Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flickr YouTube Instagram
Copyright © 2023 Northwestern University
  • Contact Northwestern University
  • Disclaimer
  • Campus Emergency Information
  • Policy Statements

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.