First do no harm

By Gena Tuffery, October 3, 2007 @ 8:23 pm

Holding the balance of life and death in your hands isn’t a game—except when it is. New Zealand-based GoVirtualMedical has finally replaced the medieval med-student practice of practicing on a prone body with a professional multimedia version of the battery-powered board game, Operation.

Available in separate ‘procedure modules’ such as the lumbar puncture, each interactive software programme utilises a combination of text, anatomy, video and simulation to allow the medical student to perfect their technique onscreen before they go in-patient.

GoVirtualMedical’s CEO, Keith Pine, believes his practice programs could save thousands of lives. “98,000 people die of medical misadventure every year in the US,” he says. “And that’s because of the failure of the apprentice model.”

Why is this US statistic relevant? Because if Pine and company get their way the doctor-developed system will be used by their peers all over the world by the end of the year. “This is a born global company,” Pine says.

Launched last month with the $80 CPR programme, GoVirtualMedical is aimed at the entire medical team—right down to the scrub nurse. “If everyone in the operating theatre knows every step of the procedure they will be more involved with it,” says Pine.

But the major advantage of the system is in its ability to be used anytime and anywhere there’s a computer—meaning a doctor who hasn’t done an operation for three or four years can practice it half an hour before going into the operating theatre. Don’t know about you, but I hope any future surgeon of mine has a computer in his office.