ISMAR and Medicine

I attended a workshop at the ISMAR conference that focussed on current trends in medical simulations. Most of the simulations that were demonstrated were for military training purposes which does not fit my needs specifically, but I came to appreciate the technology of augmented reality and some of the applications. There was a open forum at the end of the workshop to talk about how to move medical virtual reality to the next level. I think what the vendors and the people who were present want to see happen is for medical simulators to be used in the licensing and recertification process of medical doctors. There is a proposed bill HR855 that would mandate doctors to spent a certain amount of time in simulation prior to practicing. This hasn't been passed yet, but one thing I am concerned about with this type of initiative is that it would place a requirement on professionals that may or may not be proven to help train in the particular skills that cause problems. No one can argue that the rate of medical errors is too high, however, simply creating legislature to require doctors to spend time on simulators that may or may not be useful doesn't seem to make sense. As many of our readings have implied unless the VR or AR system adds some benefit to the training simply using it "because it is there" and especially require people to use it because it is there doesn't make any sense at all. For this reason I am focussing my attention on the VR paper for education and research on studies showing efficacy. Perhaps I'm naive enough to believe that developing good VR products and conducting efficacy studies would generate the necessary interest in these simulators that all doctors would begin using them.