Acadicus is a new multi-user VR platform that's lead developed by Jon Brouchoud, who's been creating award-winning virtual world-based projects for real world work for well over a decade. Acadicus has already won last year's best in show award from the International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare, and as that suggests, medical training is one its top use cases -- honed by a doctor his team worked closely with:
"Our goal with Acadicus is to provide a VR Sim Lab where we're not providing any instruction," Jon tells me, "but are instead giving medical schools and experts the ability to create their own simulation environments. We're drawing heavily on our architectural and virtual worlds experience to focus on building this platform, and collaborate with Dr. Eric B. Bauman who serves as our medical subject matter expert. He also brings experience with virtual worlds and game based learning, so it's been a very powerful partnership. Dr. Bauman has also been our client on several healthcare and medical VR simulations as well."
Watch the trailer video below. Unlike most other VR training platforms, Acadicus is very much a multiuser experience, a feature which Jon says has excited medical professionals:
"We're currently finding the most potential in basic skills training - things like teaching a nurse how to establish a sterile field, or for a paramedic to identify hazards upon arriving at the scene of an emergency. During our time launching at the IMSH conference in San Antonio this week, one the most exciting use cases was for experts were interested in hosting their own multi-user training events in Acadicus, where students and other sim labs from anywhere could join in and participate. Where they typically rely on extensive travel, video training, and often in places that don't have sim labs or mannequins, with Acadicus they'd be able to host these training sessions within the context of the medical environments and interacting with devices relevant to the current topic that may not otherwise be available. That's a game-changing use case I can't wait to explore further."
But why not build something like this in an open platform like High Fidelity, which already has so many multiuser functions already baked in?
"Medical simulation requires a very specific range of features and highly complex/interactive content," Brouchoud argues. "By building a platform tailored to this use case, we've had the opportunity to focus on features and content that are in very close alignment with the relatively complex and specific needs of the training and simulation industry."
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