Oct. 19, 2009
NSU Medical School Announces The Use Of A Lifelike Robotic Human Simulator
FT. LAUDERDALE-DAVIE Fla. ---- There are few lessons for medical students more valuable than those learned by examining real patients.
At NSUs medical school, however, students are practicing their trade on next best thing: a life-like robotic human simulator. This device, in laymens parlance, looks like real human, feels like a real human, and responds to treatment like real human.
The only catch is that this human is filled with high-tech computerized sensors instead of real organs. And it costs $65,000.
The METI I-Stan Simulator, as its called, is being used by NSUs College of Osteopathic Medicine to train first and second-year medical students in the classroom before they see real patients during their clinical rotations at hospitals, health clinics and doctors offices during their third and fourth years.
I-Stan is very lifelike because he can do things such as blink his eyes, breathe, and talk, said Marti Echols, Ph.D., M.Ed., assistant professor of internal medicine and assistant dean of medical education at NSUs medical school. Its an incredible teaching tool because it has the programming capabilities to simulate all types of health incidences and disease states.
Some of the I-Stans key features are:
- Pupils that automatically dilate and constrict in response to light
- Thumb twitch in response to a peripheral nerve stimulator
- Automatic recognition and response to administered drugs and drug dosages
- Variable lung compliance and airway resistance
- Automatic response to needle decompression of a tension pneumothorax, chest-tube drainage, and pericardiocentesis
- Automatic control of urine output
I-Stan can simulate just about anything that can happen to a real patientfrom common problems to severe events such as malignant hyperthermia, anaphylaxis, tension pneumothorax, and cardiac tamponade.
The simulator allows students to learn to prescribe the right amount of medication to patients without fear of harming an actual patient. Using barcode technology, the device requires learners to scan a given drug, providing the instructor and learner the ability to track the thought process as it pertains to the development of a plan of care.
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