By 2019, if the evaluations underway now at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Medical School continue to confirm their effectiveness as teaching tools, medical students will learn anatomy, pharmacology, surgery and other medical classes using virtual reality holograms that would make teenaged gamers jealous.
Actually, the creators of Microsoft’s HoloLens prefer to call it “mixed reality,” because users experience both people and things within the classroom, as well as the holographic images. It offers the user the chance to interact with the holograms. CWRU Medical School Dean Dr. Pamela Davis called it “arguably the most exciting technology in medical education on the horizon today.”
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Dr. Pamela Davis
Davis said Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove introduced medical school leaders to Microsoft developers, and the medical school has been experimenting with it in anatomy and other courses to evaluate its use in curricula.
“Once we’re done with our evaluation and have developed all systems for anatomy, we will begin phasing it in,” she predicted. “We’re hoping we will be working with the HoloLens when we move into our new campus in 2019. And we will bring it up into other courses, as we have confidence they are up to CWRU quality.”
Davis said the HoloLens technology dramatically expands medical education.
“Students can not only see the beating heart hologram before them, but we can see their reactions to it and how they are responding,” she said. “It’s a tremendous adjunct. I can show you how to insert an IV or a subclavian catheter, and I can do it standing beside you, in the next room or halfway around the world.”
Davis said a professor in Cleveland could, for example, observe a surgical resident in Uganda and draw a line where a surgical incision needs to be made.
“It’s an incredible pedagogical tool that capitalizes on how millennials learn,” she explained. “It offers the best illustrations of what we want to teach and we can perfect those illustrations in three dimensions, perfect the movements of the heart and everything we want to show. The HoloLens offers tremendous potential to help students learn in the most effective way.”
She conceded there could be minor drawbacks. “The things we used to demonstrate, pick up and handle — the touch part — will not be in holograms. But we can provide the touch part in other ways.”
She said the HoloLens is particularly well suited to the teaching of anatomy.
And Davis said professors can repeat a lesson or procedure many times without ruining an organ or tissue, the way repeated uses eventually destroy cadaver parts. “We don’t have to use the HoloLens exclusively in classes. It can be a primary tool complemented by other adjuncts available to our students. It’s another part of mixed media in teaching.”
Davis said the Microsoft HoloLens currently costs a few thousand dollars for the developers’ version. “But like every other device, it will probably go down in price as it becomes more familiar and easier to build. There is a cost to this, but it’s a minimal cost. There has always been a cost in handling the old system of cadavers as well.”
Davis reiterated that the medical school is not exploring Microsoft HoloLens simply because it’s new.
“We’re conducting comparative experiments that will tell us whether students learn as well or better as with cadaveric dissection, then decide whether we’ll be making any changes. We’re not prepared to abandon traditional tools entirely. But our preliminary data looks as if the HoloLens is at least as good and possibly better,” she said.
Photos: Microsoft, Case Western Reserve University
