CENTRE FOR HEALTHCARE INNOVATION

Using VR to make healthcare training more efficient

The Centre for Healthcare Innovation, hosted at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore, has built a VR module to improve training effectiveness, with 100% of employees agreeing it deepened their knowledge.

The Centre for Healthcare Innovation (CHI) is a Co-Learning Network hosted by Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) in Singapore. Launched in October 2016, with local and international partners from academia, strategic agencies, healthcare, community and industries, its goal is to promote a culture of innovation to achieve better health and healthcare outcomes. CHI does this through training programs with a focus on partnerships and co-learning.

Improving care delivery by understanding Lean principles

The Centre for Healthcare Innovation subscribes to a learning system called 6S, which is a set of ‘Lean’ techniques designed to promote a high level of safety and productivity in the workplace. While they’d already begun to shift some training courses online prior to 2020, the pandemic really accelerated the effort. Then came VR.

"We thought VR represented a natural next step," says Loo Wei Hann, a manager specializing in Lean and Design thinking. "Particularly for specialized simulations that healthcare professionals needed to do every day. We could see the potential of VR to help people better understand Lean principles, and apply them more effectively in their everyday roles."

CHI first started experimenting with VR back in 2019. That experience gave Loo Wei Hann confidence that it could work this time around. "We needed a solution that was scalable far beyond the walls of TTSH," he says. "Our hypothesis was that VR training would help us improve care delivery.”

CHI internal data, 2023

“

100% of participants have agreed that the VR has enhanced and deepened their understanding of Lean knowledge.

VR training through the MyCare app

CHI partnered with FXMedia, a VR agency based in the Asia-Pacific region, to create a lifelike simulation of the blood-taking room at a Specialist Outpatient Clinic in VR.

They called the resulting app 'MyCare VR'. The app allowed employees to take part in a virtual training program that helped them identify and remove unnecessary processes in accordance with Lean principles. The program (which simulated a blood-taking procedure) was storyboarded with the help of the hospital's clinical team to ensure it was as accurate as possible.

Key features

Here are some of the key features CHI included in the training module in the MyCare VR app.

Visual, audio and tactile engagement

Catering to different types of learners and providing a balance in the engagement of their senses

Avatars

Putting a familiar face to give learners that ‘personal touch’

Tutorial

Help learners get comfortable with the technology and controls

Small game segments

Prevent cognitive overload and improve the learner’s focus

The results of training in VR

So, how did it go? “The early results are extremely promising,” says Loo Wei Hann. “We’re really excited that every single participant in the training agrees that VR has enhanced and deepened their understanding of 6S knowledge. It was a key target and we’re so happy to have hit it.”

Not only that, VR has also laid some other essential groundwork ahead of scaling the training programs out to more people.

CHI Trainee feedback

“

Gone are the days of boring classroom learning! VR training was fun and enriching, allowing me to learn in the simulated environment that looks just like a real scenario

It’s given staff exposure to VR - some for the first time - and enabled them to understand the practical learning applications. The training was successfully completed by staff members with a wide range of ages and experience. And it’s also gone a long way to proving the use case for VR - not only for specialist simulation training, but soft-skills training and more.

VR TRAINING TOP TIP

Orientate and acclimatize trainees

As part of the roll out, CHI wanted to make sure trainees were acclimatized to VR before the proper training course began.

To do this, they built a simple tutorial and orientation module that covered all the basic controls and functions before getting started. It meant that people had time to find their feet and settle into the virtual environment before the training began.