CAE, Staffordshire University extend virtual patient simulations, drive better healthcare education with Azure

Some things are difficult—and risky—to learn. But what if high-stakes situations like flying a plane or performing critical healthcare services could be turned into interactive, near real-life training experiences with almost no risk? Imagine how much could be learned from customized training solutions that bring together AI, virtual reality, mixed reality, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and data analytics to create a powerful, immersive educational experience that simulates real-life circumstances.

Canadian training company CAE Healthcare has done just that. Long recognized as a leader for hands-on flight and medical simulation services, CAE Healthcare and its revolutionary innovations help advance these critical industries and those working within them. For example, CAE Healthcare’s intelligent medical manikins and patient simulation software under the CAE Maestro brand are used to train healthcare workers in intricate medical procedures, including emergency care, nursing, cardiology, and childbirth.

CAE Maestro offerings deliver many valuable training benefits for healthcare professionals and educators, but CAE Healthcare recognized that some institutions and providers needed something different—a portable, cost-effective approach that could meet learners whenever and wherever they are. Demand has also grown for virtual patient simulation solutions that promote sustainability and accessibility and provide data-driven insights for learners. And like many other sectors, healthcare and healthcare education are coping with new remote teaching and learning requirements and expectations.

To make patient-simulation training more accessible and affordable for more healthcare professionals and to help deliver it quickly and efficiently, CAE Healthcare adopted Microsoft Azure cloud services to launch CAE Maestro Evolve, the latest generation of its simulation platform. Rather than replacing CAE Healthcare’s physical manikins, CAE Maestro Evolve expands them, diving into the digital realm and enhancing the simulation experience by making remote learning more realistic and responsive, underpinned by cloud technology.

“Our use of Azure cloud services for the CAE Maestro Evolve platform, combined with Azure IoT Hub and Azure Functions for processing scenarios, means educators can review data from almost every aspect of the simulation so they can help their learners better prepare, and ultimately, improve patient outcomes in the real world,” says Erick Fortin, Director of Engineering at CAE Healthcare.

Bringing remote simulation to Staffordshire University students and instructors

Staffordshire University, a multi-campus, multidisciplinary university in the United Kingdom, adopted CAE Maestro Evolve to deliver an enhanced learning experience for its healthcare students. The university now provides new remote learning capabilities that students can access over digital collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams. CAE Maestro Evolve simulates a diverse range of clinical experiences with a digital patient, and learners practice performing essential medical procedures such as taking a pulse and performing defibrillation while the digital patient reacts in real time with relevant symptoms. From the experience, learners gain a wealth of new insights, data points derived from IoT sensors, and instructor feedback based on their performance during the simulation.

“The CAE Maestro Evolve platform has given us the ability to bring the tactile teaching element around assessing patients into remote classrooms,” says Emily Browne, Associate Dean for Innovation and Enterprise in the School of Health, Science and Wellbeing at Staffordshire University. “We’ve adopted it as part of our five-stage framework for the integration of skills and simulation within our curricula. We can also now run simulations over Microsoft Teams, adding more dimension to preparing students for the lab, and later, clinics and hospitals.”

Pushing the healthcare curriculum and remote classroom forward

Staffordshire University’s journey with CAE Maestro Evolve and Azure began with a desire to redesign its approach to offering high-quality training and simulation capabilities to students. “We were looking for well-priced simulators that would support theoretical content to videos, lectures, task training, and beyond,” says Browne. “The equipment that we’ve had from CAE Healthcare has really formed a big part of that.”

When CAE Healthcare moved to digitize its manikin platform and support immersive remote learning capabilities, Staffordshire University jumped onboard, excited to expand its students’ access to simulations on an intuitive, full body virtual patient in a fully equipped, simulated patient room. University administrators wanted to give students access to highly valuable, hands-on training opportunities from any internet-enabled location and allow them to practice independently without needing access to a physical manikin. By providing remote learning opportunities, Staffordshire University could also help its instructors, who are practicing clinicians, spend less time commuting and setting up simulations and more time with their patients.

The university’s students and staff already used Microsoft 365 along with Surface Pro devices, and its digital team found the Azure-based CAE Maestro Evolve platform simple and quick to implement, with teams at both CAE Healthcare and Microsoft also available to answer any questions. “At Staffordshire, we’ve embraced Microsoft technology as part of our student and staff experience,” says Browne. “So, our digital services team was fully aligned with us using CAE Maestro Evolve to improve the remote classroom.”

Data insights, better feedback, safer healthcare practitioners

In practice, instructors and learners at Staffordshire University use CAE Maestro Evolve to glean detailed data insights, tracking both the performance of the student and the digital patient’s response to any—and every—decision made. “Within these simulations, we look at more than technical skill,” explains Browne. “Did the student make eye contact and converse with the patient? How did they work with the team around them? We can throw in difficult things like a patient who is agitated, aggressive, or not communicating and see how they deal with the things you can’t necessarily prepare for.”

Instructors use the complementary CAE LearningSpace simulation management system, hosted through Azure, to film students’ simulation exercises and enter time-stamped feedback and patient outcomes. By collecting data in Azure IoT Hub to process events through Azure Functions, they can review data from multiple IoT sensors attached to the virtual patient manikin, covering almost every aspect of the procedure that students are trying to learn or practice. That data can show instructors whether a student correctly palpated for a pulse, tried to listen for the right sounds, or performed CPR appropriately. “If the patient manikin needs to be resuscitated, we’re looking for that correct rate, depth, recoil, and hand positioning for every compression,” says Joe Natalello, Senior Lecturer in the School of Health, Science and Wellbeing at Staffordshire University. “In CAE Maestro Evolve, that’s all displayed in real time and summarized after the session.”

With CAE Maestro Evolve, Staffordshire University can ultimately deliver the entire simulation experience remotely and asynchronously. Adds Browne, “Students can think, ‘I’m going to be brilliant at this!’ But put them in a simulation situation, and that might give them more insight into themselves. The more they can practice and potentially get things wrong within simulation training, the safer the practitioner they are because they can recognize where they need to explore more.”

Better healthcare education and improved patient outcomes

As demonstrated at Staffordshire University, supporting healthcare learning with CAE Maestro Evolve greatly enhances the student experience, boosting aspiring healthcare workers’ competence and confidence heading into the profession. The applications for remote learning don’t stop at healthcare. Browne notes that Staffordshire University’s pedagogical approach to integrating simulation into program curricula has already started to expand to other science courses.

“The sort of remote training and simulation capabilities we gain from CAE Maestro Evolve adds to our ability to give students wider experiences with situations that we can’t replicate because it wouldn’t be safe to do so,” says Browne. “We’re providing realism within a session that would’ve normally been set up like a lecture, so it gives a different modality to teaching.”

Although skills delivery and simulation haven’t necessarily sped up, using CAE Maestro Evolve helps change how educators and students use their time. With more resources available digitally and remotely through the Azure-based platform, students can watch keynote lectures and skills videos online before deep diving into simulations on the virtual manikins, all leading up to eventual physical training. “With students coming in having already completed self-taught learning opportunities, we have significantly more time for actual simulation, and that’s the bit that’s going to make a difference for our students’ confidence,” says Browne.

Whether bringing students together from multiple schools, districts, or countries all over the world to practice a procedure or going global and offering simulated emergency health training to a healthcare worker looking after a patient in a remote area, CAE Maestro Evolve also drives accessibility and reach for healthcare education and services. Ask any student, educator, or professional: CAE Healthcare is changing the way healthcare education and services are delivered with its Maestro Evolve platform, breaking down traditional barriers to help ensure that everyone has access to personalized, high-quality healthcare.

Discover more about CAE Healthcare on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.