Shaping Change Innovation Team help launch virtual reality education lab at UHW for Cardiff University Students

A new virtual reality lab has been installed at University Hospital Wales to enhance learning for health and social care students at Cardiff University. Shaping Change Innovation Team at Cardiff and Vale UHB have enabled and supported project delivery by sourcing £85K from Welsh Government.

Cardiff University has supported the project by purchasing further XR and computer equipment for the XR lab. The lab is designed to simulate a realistic environment, whilst allowing students to learn / practice in a safe environment.

It is an immersive projection space that can be used for small group teaching and simulations as well as being a collaboration and development space for the further development of immersive learning technology. The space can also be used for headset-based VR activities, with various headsets available to loan.
It is intended to create a more realistic setting for a simulation, particularly public, busy, noisy, or chaotic environments. Students can learn from being in busy / realistic virtual environments (such as the resus room or a pre-hospital shift) where they can practice in a safe setting. The opportunity to learn from these types of activities in real-life may be difficult as these can be rare events. The VR cube has audio and life-size, large scale visual outputs. The walls are also interactive, presenting an engaging and immersive experience.

Many universities across the UK have adopted this approach to learning. Cardiff and Vale UHB and Cardiff University intend to continue evaluating the success of the immersive teaching and simulation activities to further develop the offering to health and social care students. Cardiff University Digital Education Team have been running demos of the space, capturing ideas, and collaborating with teaching staff to bring those ideas to reality before the next academic year.

Owen Crawford, Digital Learning Manager at Cardiff University said;
‘In the future we expect that we'll see similar digital simulation tools that run on computers, or in VR headsets to be integrated into immersive projection spaces. We also think that this space will be able to influence future similar developments around the campus, sharing what we've learned across disciplines and institutions. We'd also expect to see people booking it out for industry meetings about immersive learning projects, in a space that is already configured for demoing and development, rather than people trying to do this in standard classrooms.’

Mark Briggs, Assistant Director of Innovation said;
‘I am really pleased to see the new labs up and running and particularly grateful to Cardiff University colleagues for all their effort to making this a reality [pun intended]. Gratifyingly, we have had an enthusiastic response and uptake from colleagues with regular bookings already in the diary. I am now looking forward to see how we can develop and use the space further and add it to the pool of collated XR resources that can be accessed in Wales.’

Huw Williams, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff Medical School and Chair of the ‘Immersive Technology Special Interest Group’ (Imm Tech SIG) at the Life Science Hub Wales said;
‘The creation of this new virtual reality lab puts Cardiff and Vale UHB and Cardiff University in a position where they can help lead development of knew extended reality and immersive technology projects. We hope that in collaboration with others from HEIW and higher education institutions we will be able to use the space to work with industry to develop and evaluate new XR products in healthcare and healthcare education.’

• To arrange a demo, please get in touch with cav.innovation@wales.nhs.uk

• To find out more about how Cardiff and Vale UHB and Cardiff University (amongst others) are involved with the ‘Immersive Technology Special Interest Group’ (Imm Tech SIG), visit the Welsh Government website. You can also sign up to the Imm Tech SIG group by clicking here.

• If you have an innovative idea and want to find out more; get in touch with Shaping Change’s Innovation Team; mark.briggs@wales.nhs.uk or zoe.hilton@wales.nhs.uk