In a room painted white with a grey carpeted floor sits a big flat screen television mounted on the wall. A black gadget with the semblance of swimming goggles lays on the table. As a group of people make their way into the room, a youthful lady later revealed as Ms Grace Kebirungi, the project coordinator African Centre of Excellence (ACE) takes the big goggles and says: "Please take a seat, feel comfortable as we take you into the future."
At this point, as Ms Kebirungi takes the goggles and on dry ground, she reveals; these are virtual reality headsets.
Wearing the goggles through an instructed session, she moves her hands in the open space. Immediately, a human figure reflection is displayed on the TV screen wearing a physically non-existent medical gown. That is virtual reality (VR)!
"It feels just as it would if you were wearing the actual suit. There is no difference. It took me about a minute to learn how to use the headsets. I did not have to go to school to learn how to use this, Kebirungi narrates.
Virtual Reality
Dr Daudi Jjingo, the director ACE explains that VR is the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment that immerses the user into an experience. It uses dynamic 3D-visualisation to actualise a near real-world rendition of the circumstances and context.
"With this technology, you can create a person in the virtual space, create a building and give them the ability to interact. The person can walk towards and in the building or walk away from it. Once one wears the VR headsets, he finds himself in a reality that is virtual," he explains.
Virtual reality, he says, allows one to be within an environment with the ability to manipulate it. VR has multiple applications including games and most recently in Uganda, education.
VR in medical training
The ACE - a department under the Infectious Diseases Institute Makerere University, specialises in research and data science aimed at training and supporting African researchers.
It undertook a pilot test in 2020 to examine the feasibility of using VR to optimise safety and competence of health workers in the management of patients with Covid-19.
The pilot was co-funded by the Government of Uganda through the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (RIF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
According to Dr Umaru Ssekabira, head of Training, Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), the project was informed by the unexpected emergence of Covid-19 which limited the applicability of traditional means of training health workers in combating diseases such as classroom training. Prone to the risk of infection of the virus which increases with physical contact, IDI was of the school of thought that virtual reality would be a safe means of educating health workers (HW).
"We proposed a new model of utilising virtual reality where we simulate the real situations and immerse the trainees. This is cheaper since it does not require personal protective equipment (PPE), immerses HWs without exposure to infection, meets the requirement of social distancing and improves knowledge and skills assimilation and retention," he explains.
Feasibility
Some 52 frontline health workers from Kampala and Wakiso including medical officers, nursing officers, clinical officers, and laboratory technologists among others were trained.
Dr Elizabeth Katwesigye, Physician at IDI says the training proved successful with majority of trainees scoring above 80 per cent.
"A comparison of a bottom baseline of an untrained cohort with a comparable VR-trained cohort revealed that there is a clear and significant improvement by way of skills and knowledge gained through the VR pilot training," she reveals.
In light of the success of the pilot, the scientists hope to scale the use of VR as they discover new ways of leveraging it.
Possible VR applications and opportunities
Mr Mike Nsubuga, IT & VR Specialist at IDI, ACE says VR can also be applied to other medical trainings, architecture and urban design, digital marketing and entertainment among others.
There is also a need for capacity building of VR in the country and developing custom platforms appropriate for local needs which would create opportunities for VR Programmers, 3D artists and video producers.
Dr Sabrina Kitaka, representative of grants management committee (RIF) says the use of computers and artificial intelligence is slowly gaining pace and will be pivotal in the medical training and the education sector as manifested during the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Different pandemics keep cropping up and Covid-19 is just one of them. But we know that Uganda has experienced other infectious diseases such as Ebola, Cholera and Marburg. We don't know when the next pandemic will come, so if we can learn to teach people virtually then that is the way forward," she explains.
Reiterating Dr Kitaka's view, Dr Jjingo believes that VR will revolutionalise teaching experiences and improve medical practice as learners engage in practical trainings that pose no threat to human life.
VIRTUAL REALITY
VR in medical space
The use of AR and VR is currently focused in a number of discrete areas. For patients, these technologies can speed education about conditions or treatment plans. They can even be therapies themselves when used in visualisation and relaxation exercises. Applications in opioid addiction therapy, phantom limb treatment, phobia therapies, cancer therapy planning, peri-operative planning, posttraumatic stress disorder,
and general pain management are some established examples.
Source: The Monitor