Major Incident Simulations

Introduction
The MISSIVE project (Major Incident Scenario Simulation in Virtual Environments) seeks to determine the feasibility of utilising virtual world environments as training adjuncts for major incident simulation.  The project has been funded by the UK Health Protection Agency.

What is the need?
An effective response is to a major incident is dependent on the training, preparation and co-ordination of the pre-hospital and intra-hospital facilities that receive and treat the casualties. There is evidence that many healthcare providers in developed countries are poorly prepared to deal with major incidents and that staff are not familiar with major incident plans or confident of their role in an incident. Importantly, major incident response requires a different skill set from everyday practice. Current training methodologies can be expensive, difficult to both organise and analyse, and are often inaccessible to many responders.

What have we done?
Imperial College have created three virtual world scenarios and environments to demonstrate the capability of virtual worlds in simulation of a major incident. The scenarios are currently being validated by users and experts. The scenarios demonstrate pre and intra-hospital response from both clinical and management perspectives. Participants are evaluated using validated clinical and non-technical skills assessments.

Details of the Research: NIHR Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality at Imperial College

Publications 
Evaluation of the data collected, validation and proof of concept. The results were published in Resuscitation Vol 84: Dave Taylor Publications

What is the next stage?
Evaluation of the data collected should lead to validation and proof of concept. The results will be published in appropriate academic journals.

Workshop
Our interactive workshop at The Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference in Second Life on May 11th 2011 was attended by 50 people from around the world

 Click this SLURL to visit.

Further details
• Here is a short movie clip illustrating one of the scenarios we developed for paramedics involved in major incident casualty triage and treatment.

• This poster, describing our virtual patient technology was a prize winning submission for the 2011 “Medicine Meets Virtual Reality” conference.

• Presentation at LEEF (June 16 2011): Summary