Kauka replicates a operating room of the Hospital Universitario Donostia for the training of the staff sanitary

The start-up from Guipuzcoa Kauka has replicated in a virtual way a operating room of the Donostia University Hospital with the goal to collaborate with the training of the staff Osakidetza health . The student of Tecnun Jaime Baez has analyzed the learning achieved by the 55 nurses at the Hospital who participated in the study. Specifically, as explained by Jon Zabaleta, a doctor specializing in thoracic surgery at the Hospital Universitario Donostia, the study evaluated the handling of medical instruments in thoracic surgery with the idea of implementing this training technique for another subject surgery in the future: "The immersive experience created by this technology is total and the results have been very positive", emphasized Zabaleta.

It should be noted that the partnership between Kauka, the Hospital Universitario Donostia and Tecnun, the School of Engineering of the University of Navarra, arose as a result of COVID-19, due to the "lack of resources" and the "need for training" of the Osakidetza healthcare staff , as expressed by Tánit Esnal, CEO of Kauka. "These technologies create simulations of healthcare procedures so that, in a totally safe environment, processes can be learned or remembered without putting patient safety at risk."

The data recorded by the student Jaime Baez, such as the issue of tasks performed, the confidence achieved, the time employee in the handling of the instruments or the issue of errors made, show significant differences in the nurses who did this module of training compared to those who did not. In addition, Baez recognizes that "one of the requirements was that none of them had experience in the handling of instruments in this subject of thoracic surgery to see if they could really learn or not". For his part, Jon Zabaleta, who is also a professor at Degree in Biomedical Engineering at Tecnun, assures that "these first results encourage us to continue exploring the uses and utilities of virtual reality".

Transfer of knowledge

On the other hand, the Full Professor of the department of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences of Tecnun Javier Aldazábal highlights the impact of this subject of collaborations in the student body: "This same tool has been used by our students of Master's Degree and they are learning that the field of virtual reality has a clear didactic vocation and that it is possible to extract data that corroborate the improvements that these technologies imply", he said. Specifically, the students have used the tool developed by Kauka assisting in a operating room of the Hospital Universitario Donostia, in a lung operation. "Under normal conditions none of them would be able to do it, but with financial aid virtual reality they have been able to familiarize themselves with the instruments and the surgical procedures in a completely safe way," the professor acknowledged. "The students have already seen how the technology works and in the future they will be able to detect possible fields of application for it.

It should be noted that the simulation glasses used for the study were those that goal donated to Tecnun last year, allowing it to bet on a new methodology professor in virtual reality.