Antarctic Trauma Sim | Immersive Projects

Collaboration between Medicine and Health, the Masters of Simulation & Immersive Technologies Program (and its students) plus the PVCE Media & Immersive Team to create a multiplayer medical VR simulation of a complex trauma scenario set on the deck of a ship in the Antarctic. The students play the roles of the response team where the scenario would require them to evaluate, triage, communicate, respond/treat through to resolution in the constrained time period.

Project Details

Minimum would be a working proof of concept that medicine students can run through in teams that is informing the project. If possible we could run it as a mini 'simwar' where different groups run through the scenario and compare their choices and success. The scenarios being developed could be tuned to either junior students or the more senior cohort with the ability to vary the patient conditions, complexity and in-sim guidance for the players.

The current work on the Antarctic Trauma Sim is concentrated on research, narrative design, UI and proof of concept development on the patient simulations and how evaluation and treatment components will function.

Development of the systems to support stationary and room scale networked simulations of this type is also underway. This would allow the response team to collaborate in real-time making choices on how they triage and treat the various patients. The same system would permit staff and other students to also join the simulation as observers on screens or in VR themselves.

Carefully crafted narratives and patient profiles are being honed to make sure they meet the goals of the project learning and can be realised with the technologies.

TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT

The active design and development of the project continues in collaboration with Medicine and MSIT staff and students. The staff and work integrated learning student developers are using the Unity game engine to bring together all the elements and deliver the VR experience using our Meta Quest 3 headsets. The networking and avatar components are being explored as well through a sister project.

One of the key aspects of the project is to have capstone students from the Master of Simulation and Immersive Technologies program pickup the work of the previous cohort to continue the development in a chain. So far 11 students have worked on the simulation as the core of their capstone - researching, designing, developing and testing.

Credits

Project Leads:

Tina Holmes (Program Director: Simulation and Research | South West Sydney Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre | School of Clinical Medicine | UNSW Medicine & Health)
Teresa Crea (Senior Lecturer | Researcher | Program Director : Simulation and Immersive Technologies | ADA Creative Technologies Network Lead)
Graham Hannah (Manager of Immersive Technologies | PVC Education Innovation Pillar)

Developers:

Xueqing Sherry Lu (Immersive Technology Specialist and Developer | PVC Education Innovation Pillar)
Tim Dodds (Immersive Technology Specialist and Developer | PVC Education Innovation Pillar)

Work Integrated Learning Student Partners:

Yihao Sun (MSIT Capstone)
Xiaohan Ding (MSIT Capstone)
Tianyu Wen (MSIT Capstone)
Yuan Jing (MSIT Capstone)
Zhihan Cui (MSIT Capstone)
Alex O'Neill (Software Engineering Thesis)
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Haoming Zhang (MSIT Capstone)
Li Emily Yang (MSIT Capstone)
Yukai Kevin Tian (MSIT Capstone)
Haobo Liang (MSIT Capstone)
Peiye Ren (MSIT Capstone)
Zichen Huang (MSIT Capstone)

Get Involved

There are internal Teams Channels, Miro Boards and working groups covering the development collaboration with Medicine and ADA Simulation & Immersive Technology academics. To find out more, join the team, get a demo or have your class or promotion use-case included just get in touch.