SimX selected to develop VR medical training for women’s health in collaboration with Department of the Air Force

SimX announces it has been selected by AFWERX for a STTR in the amount of US$1,250,000 focused on building a Virtual Reality (VR) medical simulation training curriculum for women’s health to address the most pressing challenges in the Department of the Air Force (DAF).  

SimX is an industry-leading Virtual Reality medical simulation platform that is used around the world and by top institutions including Mayo Clinic, Stanford, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, the US Air Force, and many others. SimX claims to be the world’s most comprehensive Virtual Reality medical simulation training platform and home to the largest library of VR-simulated patient encounters. Developed by clinicians for clinicians, SimX is currently used to train doctors, nurses, EMS, healthcare providers and military personnel to prepare through more accessible, immersive and affordable simulated patient encounters.  

The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) process by accelerating the small business experience through faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and eliminating bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution. 

Through this grant, SimX is collaborating with simulation training experts at the USF Health Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) at the University of South Florida. The CAMLS team will help remove the traditional barriers that health care providers encounter by bringing specialised medical training directly to them using an immersive experience of modern VR technology, combined with the benefits of traditional teaching methods, including personalised instruction and expert mentorship feedback. This blend aims to elevate the standard of healthcare training, making it more accessible and effective for professionals in remote areas, including military personnel in remote areas of the world.  

“I am excited to be involved in a project that supports our military nurses,” said Alan Todd, DNP, CRNA, CHSE, FAANA, Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, Military Healthcare Simulation and Training researcher at USF Health CAMLS, and principal investigator for the SimX project. “We have an opportunity to make a huge impact on how we train both military and civilian nurses in the future using Virtual Reality technology. The integration of VR technology into simulation educational activities allows us to train health teams remotely on advanced health care procedures.”