University of Arkansas researchers seeking new ways to make healthcare more efficient and cost-effective have built a new kind of hospital: one that uses location aware systems, sensors, smart devices, radio-frequency identification and virtual reality.
Anyone can visit this hospital on “University of Arkansas” island in Second Life, a free online 3D virtual world. About 40 university students and six high school students from the EAST Initiative worked with professors Craig Thompson and Fran Hagstrom to create the virtual hospital and supply chain in Second Life.
The students have visited local hospitals to understand what needs to exist. They have created a building with patient rooms, intensive care, a diagnostics suite, a pharmacy and supply rooms. In Second Life, professors and students can create things that they believe will exist soon in the real world, and then interact with those items to see how they work.
“Students in my artificial intelligence class developed smart pill bottles that only the owner can open and that know their pill count, smart shelves that know when to re-order, a restocking robot, wheelchairs that follow way points and virtual RFID readers and tags,” said Thompson.
The students also created something that most avatars, or virtual beings within Second Life, lack – internal organs. Now the virtual doctors can perform virtual organ transplant operations.
“We feel there is huge potential here – well beyond health care or the groups we have touched so far,” stated 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.”
“This program cuts across the boundaries of departments and colleges, with participants and ideas from the colleges of engineering, business, education and arts and sciences,” said Malcolm Williamson, who works with the project. Partners in the project include the Center for Innovation in Healthcare Logistics, the RFID Research Center, the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, the Arkansas Science & Technology Authority and the EAST Initiative.
Please visit http://vw.ddns.uark.edu for more information on the project.