PEI to open tech-advanced medical school facility this year

Twenty students selected to join the charter class at Memorial University’s regional medical school campus located at the University of Prince Edward Island’s (UPEI) new Faculty of Medicine and Interprofessional Health Education Facility in August will be able to take advantage of an amazing collection of advanced medical learning technologies.

Among the learning technologies in the school’s Clinical Learning and Simulation Centre (CLSC) is an Anatomage Table, a 3D medical visualization technology that provides ultra-high-definition, life-size digital representations of human anatomy, physiology and pathology (anatomage.com).

Also described as a virtual dissection platform, the Anatomage Table produces images from thin-slice CT or MRI scans of real frozen cadavers, allowing learners to study bodies from different angles and at different layers, rotate them, look at all the different organs or remove them to just see the skeleton.

With a swipe of one’s finger, a student can slice through the head, for example, and turn it to reveal detail of the brain.

The digital cadaver also offers lessons and case studies; students can repeat the experience as much as needed, gaining expertise in anatomy and pathology.

For its part, Anatomage is a pioneer in the digitization of human bodies. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., it began more than 20 years ago by developing an accurate digital representation of real cadavers through its “Anatomage Bodies”.

Gradually, the company augmented the digital cadavers with functional responses, extending the visualization of human anatomy to functional anatomy and pathology.

The platforms are used at leading-edge medical schools and teaching hospitals, including the Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medicine and the Mayo Clinic.

UPEI’s clinical learning and simulation centre is also equipped with an immersive simulation room that uses projectors and scent diffusers to replicate almost any imaginable setting or environment. It could be the back of an ambulance, a critical care unit in a hospital, a forest or a beach, said Tammie Muise, director of the CLSC.

“Using a 360-degree camera, you can go to any location, do a scan of the area and create that exact space in the immersive simulation room,” she said. “You don’t have to wear goggles or a headset. You actually feel that you’re in that space.”

The school, which will initially operate as a regional campus of Memorial University’s Doctor of Medicine program until a joint degree is established, also features 10 so-called hi-fidelity rooms, each of which is fully furnished to simulate an environment in which students can learn and practise their skills.

One room that simulates a critical care unit, for example, will be furnished with a hospital bed and diagnostic equipment, along with an animatronic mannequin.

Because the CLSC will also be used for allied health professional learners in nursing and paramedicine, other rooms will simulate the back of an ambulance, a patient’s home, or a nursing desk in a hospital.

A paramedicine student, for example, will be able to practise attending to patients in their home, transfer them to an adjoining room that simulates an ambulance, and then to a third adjoining room that simulates an acute care facility.

Each room is equipped with cameras and microphones, allowing faculty to plan scenarios, watch students live or record them and review their performance and provide feedback. Technical staff in a control room can operate the animatronic mannequins to mimic crying, sweating, coughing, or vomiting.

They breathe, have a pulse, and can be operated by someone in the control room to converse with a student, scream or cry out in pain. Their eyes even look at the student during the encounter.

The CLSC has a collection of mannequins, including adults, babies and a pregnant woman. One mannequin, created from a 3-D scan of a real, seven-year-old girl with Down Syndrome can be used for training and managing care for a child with the same condition, said Muise.

The school has 16 simulated clinic rooms where medical learners will engage with standardized patients, examine them, take their medical histories and practise their clinical skills.

Faculty can monitor and assess the students by watching them live through one-way windows and headphones or in their own offices through cameras and microphones.

A SimRig mobile ambulance trainer has also been acquired by the school to train paramedicine students in the field. Pulled by a truck, the SimRig looks exactly like the back of a real ambulance. It’s fully stocked with medical supplies and equipment and can be taken anywhere on the Island to simulate an accident or emergency using an animatronic mannequin.

The decision to establish a Faculty of Medicine and Interprofessional Health Education Center at UPEI was announced in October 2021. Construction of a state-of-the art, five-storey building on the grounds of the school’s Charlottetown campus began exactly one year later.

The 140,000 square-foot building is designed to maximize exposure to natural light and features a closed-loop geothermal heating and cooling system. Of the $90 million price tag for the building, a total of $30 million was dedicated to the future-facing medical education technologies, said Muise.

The school is intended to help relieve the current shortage of family doctors and nurse practitioners in PEI, whose health authority currently lists 38,006 Islanders on an orphan patient registry, representing a shortage of approximately 50 primary care providers.

The school’s focus on family practice and rural health will be complemented by the presence of a patient medical home or a team-based primary care clinic within the building that will serve 10,000 or more patients and provide students with valuable clinical learning opportunities.