Students in Arkansas spent the last few months developing a virtual hospital that showcases the technologies that will hopefully be present in future healthcare settings, according to Smart Economy.

The hospital, called Razorback Hospital, was built on the University of Arkansas island in Second Life, an online 3D virtual world, and was built by students along with two UA professors. It was created also in tandem with the school’s Computer Science and Computer Engineering department who built the project Web site.

The students first consulted real life hospitals to see what needs existed, and then created the virtual one. The main goal was to see how new technologies would work in this setting.

The hospital is a testament to the forthcoming complexities of the modern-day health facility. To that end, the students decided to build Razorback using, according to the university itself, “ubiquitous computing, location aware systems, RFID, massive use of sensors, smart devices, using natural language to talk to devices, workflows, ways of merging reality and virtual reality, and other technology ideas.” The result has been an advanced and virtual representation of things to come.

“We feel there is huge potential here – well beyond health care or the groups we have touched so far,” said Adam Barnes, a staff member on the project. “The project is really about the future world we will all live in – where every object is a network object and humans can communicate with things as well as they do with each other.”

Also interesting is that the students were able to build internal organs for patients. This has enabled virtual doctors to perform virtual transplants, a leap forward in the training possibilities for virtual worlds.