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Natural and virtual environments for the training of emergency medicine personnel

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Abstract

EMERGENZA (emergency in Italian) is a ‘serious’ game, developed in the context of the RIMSI project and designed to improve the training of emergency medicine operators. To achieve this goal, it adopts natural interaction paradigms in immersive environments. Virtual reality systems have been used recently in combination with natural interface systems for enhancing patients’ rehabilitation procedures though are proving especially effective in the development of clinical decision support and medical training systems. The use of immersive simulations in medical training is extremely useful to confront emergency operators with scenarios that range from usual (e.g. unconscious person on the ground) to extreme (car accident with several injured people) without exposing the simulation participants in any harm. It is critical to exploit 3D virtual worlds in order to provide as much contextual information as possible to the operators. In fact, each emergency procedure needs to be adapted depending on the environmental threats and the presence of multiple injured people in need of assistance or bystanders. EMERGENZA allows to simulate a first-aid scenario with a configurable virtual environment using interactive 3D graphics. Users can interact through a natural interface for navigation and interaction with the virtual environment. In order to evaluate the prototype, several heuristics have been chosen and tested to measure the overall system usability. Results show that the adoption of natural interaction in immersive virtual environments receives good feedback from users.

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Notes

  1. “Harvey mannequin” was one of the earliest electronic patients, currently sold by Laerdal Corporation.

  2. http://www.micc.unifi.it/vim/datasets/hand-pose/.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Regione Toscana RIMSI Project (Program POR CREO FESR 2007-2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MICC, Viale Morgagni 65, Florence, Italy

    Andrea Ferracani, Daniele Pezzatini, Lorenzo Seidenari & Alberto Del Bimbo

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  1. Andrea Ferracani
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  2. Daniele Pezzatini
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  3. Lorenzo Seidenari
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  4. Alberto Del Bimbo
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Correspondence to Andrea Ferracani.

Additional information

Integrated Research of Simulation Models for the validation of processes and prototypes in surgical and emergency medicine, funded by Regione Toscana—Italy.

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Ferracani, A., Pezzatini, D., Seidenari, L. et al. Natural and virtual environments for the training of emergency medicine personnel. Univ Access Inf Soc 14, 351–362 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0364-1

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