Intraousseous Access Simulator in Newborns VR System

Simulators in medical procedures are important tools for learning, teaching and training allowing practices in a wide range of scenarios of life-like situations. In the field of vascular access, the use of virtual reality has been emerging as a complement to address the current problems due to the low availability of simulation manikins for training and its high cost. Intraosseous access in newborns is an invasive, fast and effective medical procedure of high complexity employed in critically ill newborns as an option to access veins after peripheral access has failed. Due to vein vasoconstriction present in neonatal shock and cardiorespiratory arrest among other life-Threatening conditions it is difficult to perform any other forms of venous access. Intraosseous access requires the proper handling of the related equipment and knowledge, this is only possible with continuous training that cannot be done in real patients. Mastering this technique is required to preserve patient's life, achieve a good recovery and reduce the risk of infection or even death. This paper presents the development of a newborn's intraosseous access simulator for training covering the required steps involved in the procedure. To increase the immersion of the simulation, a force feedback haptic device is integrated to simulate the needle insertion beneath leg tissues to the bone with a biomechanical tissue model, which is the more important skill to be developed in this procedure, and a consumer head mounted display to provide a stereo view of the operation room to give depth to the user when approaching to the patient leg. Our preliminary results were evaluated by a medical expert in terms of usability of the prototype.