Virtual scenarios
In a collaboration between NHS Education for Scotland and the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art 3D patients are being created to help facilitate learning.
Digital tools present great opportunities to health education.In this project professionals will be able to access and use virtual patient scenarios to develop skills in Pharmaceutical Public Health and Drug Misuse.
The 3D patient scenarios that will shortly be available will provIde learning about;
- Alcohol withdrawal
- Drug misuse
- Healthy eating
- Smoking cessation
The scenarios relating to smoking cessation, alcohol withdrawal and healthy eating are due to be launched in 2012. The scenarios relating to Drug Misuse will be available in 2013.
This learning environment provides the opportunity for practitioners to transfer learning into everyday healthcare through the provision of an accurate and realistic setting/scenario. Feedback is provided directly from the virtual patient to the learner with any consequences of their personal choices also being communicated.
Access, delivery (e learning) and transferability
These virtual patient healthcare scenarios will have significant benefits to training as there will be;
- Zero risk to patients
- A person-centred focus
- Challenges for learners to explore various inequality scenarios
- Authentic 3D situations
- The ablility to provide virtual patient interaction/feedback in real time
- Easy access to NHS Healthcare groups including remote and rural areas
- The ability for multiple use (and re-use) of the resource
Avatar creation
This project uses photo -realistic avatars as the patients. To date a pregnant mother, her partner and her child avatar have been created from photographs from actors. Advanced programming, modelling and motion capture techniques have been used to create and animate the avatars.
Three avatars for this project have been developed;
- Louise Cullen (mother), Jack (son) and Derek (Louise's partner)
This digital technology has been developed by the NES Dental directorate in conjunction with colleagues from the University of Glasgow, the University of Dundee Public Health depts. and specialists in the service.
NES Pharmacy have now joined forces to develop the four public health scenarios set in a pharmacy.
A comple impact assessment has been carried out on the Virtual Patient project.NES carries out such impact assessments on educational resources and opportunitites to ensure equal access and diversity is promoted wherever possible.
This project is being developed in partnership with the Digital Design Studio at Glasgow School of Art.
