Knowledge is Power: Linking augmented reality with 3D printed internal organs to Improve Medical education and increase patient involvement in clinical studies
Virtual & Augmented Reality Organ Systems (VAROS)
Our innovation is the use of augmented reality in clinical care to improve patient health literacy, and thus enrollment and adherence to clinical studies. To test for VAROS’ effect on patient health literacy, we hypothesize that if VAROS is used in comparison to the industry standard to inform patients on the quantity, size, severity, and location of their colonic polyp status post colonoscopy, then the patients using VAROS will demonstrate a greater understanding of their diagnosis due to the engagement of more senses while learning. If VAROS shows a significant improvement compared to industry standards of patient-physician conversation and 2D graphic visual representation, then VAROS will be used in a further study to determine whether patient enrollment and adherence to clinical studies is significantly different through the use of VAROS. We hypothesize that VAROS' ability to captivate patient attention while engaging multiple senses will lead to improved patient health literacy and, therefore, improved enrollment and adherence to clinical studies compared to industry standards.
Our first step was finding students with specialized skills related to our device. We have built a team of Ph.D., graduate, and undergraduate students with expertise in 3D modeling and design, augmented and virtual reality, computer science, biomedical engineering, finance, and law. I am serving as a GI clinic’s clinical research coordinator with pharmaceutical companies willing to get this product up and running, initially planned for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and eosinophilic esophagitis studies.
The next steps of VAROS include incorporating the beta version of the customizable colonic polyp quantity, severity, size, and location designs into the VAROS mobile application and begin collecting physician feedback at the Colon, Stomach, and Liver (CSL) Center in Lansdowne, VA. After spotting and handling bugs in the software, I will submit for central institutional review board review before beginning the data collection phase of our study. Depending on the results of our data analysis, we will begin data collection for phase II of our study. Following more data analysis, we will compile our results onto an ePoster for the 2022 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Global InterGrowth Conference Presentation. Afterwards, we will begin to market ourselves to pharmaceutical companies interested in using VAROS' product to enhance patient enrollment and adherence to their clinical studies.
Polyp Visualization
Virginia Tech's Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology
Working as a clinical research coordinator, I have noticed countless numbers of patients who lacked a true understanding of their diagnoses.
With diagnoses like eosinophilic esophagitis and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, can you blame them?
Of course not, but what we could do was improve the tools used to educate patients.
Better patient education = Better adherence to treatments = Healthier population
With this goal, we got to work with designing a visualization that we believe is far superior over the 2D poster board representations serving as the industry standard.
Then, we created the software capable of hosting the designs.