LONDON – September 9, 2020 – FundamentalVR, global pioneers in using immersive technology to improve the way surgeons are trained, today announced the expansion of its educational platform, Fundamental Surgery, with ‘Teaching Space’. This feature allows multiple users to visit a virtual classroom for interactive lessons and meetings.

Earlier this year, FundamentalVR expanded its multimodal platform with its multiuser capability, which allows unlimited users to practice, learn, and teach together inside an operating room (OR). Teaching Space’s addition now lets multiple users meet in a virtual classroom setting, complete with an interactive whiteboard, where they can conduct lessons, discuss a procedure before attempting it in the virtual OR, or debrief after practicing a skillset. With Teaching Space, instructors and their trainees can interact, write notes on the whiteboard, and share ideas, all from different locations and settings. Additionally, users can easily transition between Fundamental Surgery’s virtual OR and Teaching Space to make remote learning and practice even more engaging. You can see Teaching Space in action here.

“COVID-19 has presented significant challenges to surgical training and in many cases completely disrupted traditional training programs which have relied upon face-to-face events. Video conferencing facilities have come to meet the immediate communication needs of many but these 2D platforms do not fully replace the teaching and learning opportunities of being together in the same room talking about a patient case pre-operatively or live in an OR looking at the patient anatomy and handling surgical tools.” Peter Rainger, Chief Learning Officer. “Our new Teaching Space which provides a collaborative environment for surgical education in VR allows for residents and KOLs from across the globe to come together for teaching sessions, to review cases and share their knowledge and skills.  In our new Teaching Space I can simply pick up a pen and draw out concepts on a whiteboard and allow trainees to annotate and write comments all in real-time whilst talking as if we were in the same room – the possibilities for this new flexible teaching space in the future are endless!”

Teaching Space is compatible across both of Fundamental Surgery’s accredited modalities: HapticVR^TM and @HomeVR. HapticVR^TM combines VR with the sense-of-touch to enable true skills acquisition by allowing surgeons to experience the same sights, sounds and feelings they would in a real procedure. The platform utilizes off-the-shelf hardware (PCs/laptops, VR headset, and haptic arms), making it less than a tenth of the cost of current learning practices.

@HomeVR brings Fundamental Surgery’s educational simulations to standalone VR headsets such as Oculus Quest and HTC Vive Focus Plus. It complements the gold standard education capabilities of the HapticVR^TM modality and expands the platform to provide even more flexible and cost-effective learning opportunities. A single user login ensures a ubiquitous experience with the same high-fidelity graphics, education content, and data tracking capabilities across each modality. It is a significant advance for medical education. It fuses Cutaneous (tactile vibration) and Kinesthetics (force feedback & position) haptic technologies in a single platform, optimized for different learning stages.

“We developed Teaching Space to give instructors, trainees, residents, and surgeons a place to gather and continue their lessons no matter where they are located,” said Richard Vincent, CEO of FundamentalVR. “With most classes currently being conducted remotely, it is a much-needed resource right now. Long-term, we believe Teaching Space to be a feature user’s will continue to benefit from whenever they need to meet for quick lessons or review procedures at a moment’s notice.”