A right heart catheter training program based on virtual reality will soon be available on the Vantari VR platform.
The Australian VR startup has teamed up with Dr. Martin Brown, a cardiologist and adjunct clinical professor at Macquarie University who first developed the training course with Janssen Pharmaceuticals in 2017. The training program has now been approved by the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand.
The program consists of three phases: in the first phase, clinicians are trained to perform catheterization; the second stage involves recognizing waveforms from real patient cases; and the final stage is treatment of complications.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
The catheter training program was slated to launch nationwide last year but has been suspended due to COVID-19 restrictions. Since then, Dr. Brown developed a virtual course that leverages Vantari VR’s platform, which enables training to be conducted in a virtual room – the world’s first in medical education, he claims.
The current training, said Dr. Brown, implies that doctors learn the procedure on living patients. The course covers patient preparation through to the insertion of a Swan-Ganz catheter and blood collection.
The move to a VR platform will enable catheter training in a “safe, complication-free environment,” said Dr. Brown, which ultimately not only strengthens the self-confidence and skills of the trainees in inserting catheters, but also the recognition of disease patterns and the “protected management” of complications “without risk for real patients.
THE BIGGER TREND
Recently, Vantari VR was tapped by Nepean Hospital, a teaching hospital in New South Wales, is adding virtual reality training to its ICU curriculum. Over a period of three years, the hospital will use the start-up’s VR platform and jointly develop a procedural training module that includes airway management in critically ill patients.
Vantari’s technology was also introduced for Training intensive care physicians in three tertiary hospitals, Fiona Stanley Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Westmead Hospital.
ON THE RECORD
“The right heart catheter program is an exciting addition to our platform and opens up a number of potential applications in interventional cardiology,” commented Dr. Nishanth Krishnananthan, co-founder of Vantari VR.
“Our collaboration with A / P Brown started almost a year ago and what a journey it has been. Developing a complex cardiological procedure in VR would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago, but the technology has grown rapidly and we are proud to lead the way at Vantari, “shared co-founder Dr. Vijay Paul.
