Via: BreakAway Ltd - Breaking New Ground For Gaming
Pulse!! is an innovative game-based virtual learning platform that allows medical professionals to practice, at no risks to patients, decision-making protocol and experiential skills in a virtual setting using their PCs.
Pulse!! is not yet commercially available. BreakAway is partnering with healthcare, medical and academic organizations to develop the technology for wider uses and applications to meet the demands to better teach and train medical professionals.
Pulse!! is not yet commercially available. BreakAway is partnering with healthcare, medical and academic organizations to develop the technology for wider uses and applications to meet the demands to better teach and train medical professionals.
BreakAway developed the Pulse!! technology in partnership with Dr. Claudia McDonald, at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) in order to address educational and training issues presented by the growing healthcare professional shortage. Pulse!! provides a realistic, virtual learning platform for training civilian and military health care professionals to better respond to injuries sustained during catastrophic incidents, such as combat or bioterrorism.
BreakAway was recently selected by the Medical College of Georgia to apply the Pulse!! technology in the creation of a dental implant training simulation to better teach and train dental students patient assessment and diagnosis protocol for dental implant procedures.
The students will guide avatars through the process of assessing patients' physical and emotional readiness to receive dental implants and then, if appropriate, practice the surgery itself.
This is the first application of the Pulse!! training technology that BreakAway licensed early May. "Digital gaming technology is expanding as an essential component in health care education, capitalizing on the cognitive learning process to generate a more comprehensive understanding of vital concepts," said Project Director Dr. Roman M. Cibirka, Medical College of Georgia Vice President for Instruction and Associate Provost. "
Pulse!!, is currently in tests at Yale, Johns Hopkins, the National Naval Medical Center, and Tufts. Dr. Claudia L. McDonald had previously selected BreakAway to develop Pulse!!, and the two will continue to develop the platform and expand it.
"Through our collaboration with TAMU-CC to develop a platform solution for teaching and training medical professionals, we realize the urgent need for medical organizations to augment their traditional training methods with game-based technology such as Pulse!!," BreakAway CEO Doug Whatley said in a statement. "We are honored to be able to use Pulse!! technology as the starting point for delivering virtual learning tools to supplement medical training using a simulated 3D world that replicates the actual physical and emotional environment that medical professionals face whether it's in a hospital, clinic or on the battlefield."