Education in Virtual Worlds, Second Life

Healthcare Facilities Benefit from Virtual Training

Virtual worlds provide significant benefits for medical training according to the Wall Street Journal which has a well-reported and detail-rich story about the benefits of virtual training to medical facilities.

Delving into the training spaces in Second Life held by Stanford University, the University of Michigan and elsewhere, where “participants can build their own virtual clinics and stage just about any training drill they can imagine,” the article reveals some of the enormous benefits that online training offers these facilities.

Included among these, of course, is cost savings: for instance, computerized mannequins, which can cost $65K and have to be shared between 50-100 students. But in Second Life no such expensive mannequin is required and the students can undergo virtually the same training regimen.

Other benefits include being able to simulate more difficult psychological conditions such as dementia or schizophrenia. As well, there are an increasing number of people out there building full-blown virtual hospitals, including a computer scientist at Idaho State University who will build a full-scale facility for $150K.

Read the full article here.

craig

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