Virtual Heroes Announces 3DiTeams

"Advanced Learning Technology Company" Virtual Heroes has announced that it has created 3DiTeams, an interactive healthcare team trainer designed to “maximize team synchronization and skills proficiency to help reduce medical errors.” The program was designed in collaboration with faculty from Duke University Medical Center and developed with funding from the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center. 3DiTeams is based on a health care team coordination curriculum called TeamSTEPPS, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The goal of 3DiTeams is to “emphasize learning-by-doing and provide training-to-proficiency in rare, complicated or otherwise error-prone tasks.” 3DiTeams was unveiled at an American Society of Anesthesiologists conference and is currently used to train residents and advanced practice nurses, and is to be used to train Duke medical and nursing students in March. 3DiTeams is built using Epic's Unreal Engine 2.5. “Effective team coordination is critical for the safe delivery of healthcare. Development of these skills requires training and practice in an interactive team-based environment,” said Jeffrey Taekman, MD director of Human Simulation and Patient Safety at Duke Medical Center. “Virtual Heroes worked with us to create a high-fidelity, multi-user, real-world, hospital simulation in a video game setting that is based on real science.”