Pokemon Go
Learn Medicine on the Go like Pokemon Go
Dr. Usha Nandini M
MBBS
Ever played Pokemon Go? It became one of the most viral games throughout the world a few months ago. Did you know why? Because when Virtual Reality games brought real life-like experiences virtually, this was something that brought gaming experience into the real world. Technically, it augmented our reality. While it is fun to play such games, the technology has been in play since a long time and has been experimented to be used in various arenas; healthcare being one of them.
There was a time when people experimented on living beings. We tortured animals, plants and human beings for the purpose of scientific understanding and learning among many other things. Later with advancements in biotechnology, we were able to streamline and filter harmful experiments on living beings. Similarly, Augmented Reality has the potential to streamline and revolutionize medical education. A teaching hospital is said to be good if it has varieties of cases in each specialty i.e., if the teaching institute is able to provide
maximum kinds of case scenarios and allow experiencing different approaches to a case, it can groom a good doctor. Augmented Reality can simulate all kinds of case scenarios and allow to try all kinds of approaches to the same scenario. Hence it gives the budding doctor/nurse/paramedic the complete experience in dealing with a particular situation/patient in reality. It is not a theoretical concept; Google glasses and Microsoft Holo Lens have already made this possible.
Application of this technology in Medical Education can be revolutionary in various aspects. Any medico would be exposed to all possible scenarios and hence be experienced in dealing with them from the first time; even if not an expert. The huge problem of disparity between UG and PG seats in our country could be eliminated because this technology eliminates the need of huge patient load for the establishment of a Teaching institute.
Even though this seems to be far-fetched now, Augmented Reality is about to revolutionize Medical education in the near future.