ECMO VR

Why is this project important?

ECMO, Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, is a technique for providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life. This technique requires specialized trained surgeons and assistants due to the requirements for critical decision-making ability under high-stress situations.

So I asked myself these questions...

And learned about the challenges and opportunities:

I reframed the problems as...

Working with the team, I narrowed down to a solution

We decided to create a virtual classroom with the following features a whiteboard that can be written and draw on; a manikin that can be marked on and cut; a tool board that includes surgical tools, writing/drawing tool, and an expandable keyboard; a sticky note system than can be dragged, resized, rotated, edited, deleted, saved, and loaded; and a networking system that allows multiple users to join, talk, gesture, and interact with prompts.

Concept Design

Dive in to iterating the VR interactions:

Takeaways

This was an initial prototype scoped to only 3 months. In a future phase of the project, I would like to do play-tests on clinical professionals and get feedback from them. I also want to create a tutorial scene to direct new users in the environment. I will need to hear from testers with little experience in VR about what they need to get familiar and comfortable with our VR environment and interface.