Sitting in front of a computer animation of the human brain inside the iEXCEL Visualization Hub, Masaki Hayashi located the simulated aneurysm in the brain and marveled at the level of sophistication of the Z-Space 3D workbench.
As president of Diichi Medical Ltd., a medical equipment company, Hayashi, was particularly drawn to the iBench, he said, because he was curious about the 3D anatomy training module, which has the capability to respond to the user’s actions through intuitive technology.
Across the room several members of the same 20-person delegation, made up of government officials, architects, business owners and health care executives from Japan, donned HoloLens augmented reality headsets then proceeded to “walk” through a human heart.
They had come to Omaha to visit iEXCEL and to see the Dr. Edwin G. & Dorothy Balbach Davis Global Center at UNMC on Nov. 13, and they were not disappointed.
“It’s amazing,” said Takeshi Koseki, M.D., CEO of Tsukuba Memorial, a 500-bed hospital in Ibaraki, Japan.
Dr. Koseki said that he is always looking for new and innovative ways to enhance the skills of his 1,500 employees and what he saw at UNMC really impressed him.
Inside the Davis Global Center, delegation members were particularly impressed with the simulated hospital suites, which included acute and critical care units for interprofessional simulation, and the surgical and interventional skills floor that features 20 operating room bays that will focus on training for highly specialized procedures.
The group also toured the:
- SIM Center, to see the current technology being used and how that will soon evolve with the opening of the Davis Global Center;
- SIM-Nebraska Truck;
- Holographic theater, EON School Academy and five-sided laser cave inside the Davis Global Center;
- Training Simulation and Quarantine Center, where they learned about programs like the National Ebola Training and Education Center;
- Nebraska Biocontainment Unit and the role it played in the 2014 Ebola outbreak; and
- Chihuly Sanctuary inside the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center.
“What we hope our visitors took away during their visit is that while the technology is impressive, iEXCEL and the Davis Global Center are purposefully designed to improve human performance and effectiveness in health care with the ultimate goal of providing safer patient care,” said Pam Boyers, Ph.D., associate vice chancellor for clinical simulation, iEXCEL, at UNMC.