Professor Jag Dhanda using VR and AR technology in the Dissection Suite at BSMS

Professor Jag Dhanda, a Consultant Maxillofacial/Head and Neck Surgeon (OMFS) at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead and Honorary Professor of Surgery at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), has won a £1m grant from Health Education England (HEE) to develop virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) surgical training resources.

Professor Dhanda is the founder and clinical lead of Virtual Reality in Medicine and Surgery (VriMS), a free-for-trainee platform that live streams surgical training videos in virtual reality. VriMS now has more than 400 videos filmed in virtual reality from 10 surgical specialties and has just added another 100 videos.  

With the help of Professor Claire Smith, Head of Anatomy at BSMS, cadaver demonstrations of surgical techniques using virtual reality have been livestreamed over five one-week courses since the start of the pandemic. 

“I hope I can demonstrate how this exciting new immersive technology can overcome the dramatic impact that Covid-19 has had on medical and surgical education. I want to prove that VR and AR can deliver lasting improvements to surgical training across wide range of skills, and validate their use as medical education resources,” Professor Dhanda explained. 

He said that General Medical Council (GMC) had found that the Covid pandemic had had a significant impact on surgical training: “Trainees say they haven’t been able to compensatefor the lost training opportunities, and fear they have not progressed curriculum competencies. So, I believe this emerging technology is an addition to conventional face-to-facetraining – and has the potential to replace it!”

“A course has just finished where new content was live streamed and previous content restreamed. And, there will be an additional hands-on course for OMFS surgeons (CRANIOMAX), ENT and neurosurgeons that will also feature augmented reality applications for endonasal skull base access and procedures.”

Professor Dhanda said he also wanted VriMS to use eye tracking and physiological sensors with haptics to show adaptions to training and trainee responses to VR/AR technology. “I plan to use the grant to develop a true VR basic life support app for health care professionals and teachers, and augmented reality apps for mandatory training with manual handling. Also, true VR apps for basic surgical skills such as suturing and local skin flaps,” he added.