A Simulation Platform for Early Haptic Training in Surgical and Medical Education

Haptic training in simulation is a rising pedagogical trend in medical education. It is a rather new field that appeared partly because the adage “see one, do one, teach one”, from a mentoring standpoint, is undesirable due to public consideration for patient safety. Teaching strength management for a given procedure is a difficult task. This is not a skill one can retrieve from books or by only “seeing” the procedure. It needs to be experienced by the trainee. For this matter, haptic training on virtual patients offers a good opportunity to tackle this problem at the price of a constant trade-off between what technology can do and the expectation of realism. The technology is expensive, complex to maintain and very specific. Many simulators on the market use low-end devices to maintain the cost and are therefore unable to simulate proper interactions with the virtual patient. The platform presented here is an ecosystem which aims to study how to extend haptic simulations on a broader range of applications. We present an approach using innovative mechatronics, based on purely resistive force, to reach better haptic feedback at lower cost. The system is designed to be compact and safe. It allows strong and high resolution feedback as well as easy integration in existing devices. This technology will help to extend haptic simulations earlier in the curriculum where the resident requires basic hands-on experience.