Design and Development of an Augmented Reality Kit for Teaching Healthcare Students

There is a need to strengthen our healthcare system by having more and more skilled healthcare professionals. With this vision, constant changes are being brought to the teaching methodologies and curricular advancements. However, there is a lot of scope for bridging the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge. Even after so many changes, a major hurdle remains: how can we make the teaching and learning of difficult equipment and machines more interactive and interesting! How can we provide an early clinical exposure to the environment in which they would be working! How can we have an immersive experience for students that will encourage them to get involved and understand the concepts in a much simpler way!

Highlighting these pain points, we introduce the E-ClinicEx kit, which will help unlock the potential of early clinical exposure. E-ClinicEx is an interactive learning kit for healthcare students to help them learn about medical devices and equipment. The Augmented Reality (AR) application is a free complementary app with the learning kit, that is compatible with both iOS and Android. With the proposed application, learning is extended from two dimensions to three dimensions. It allows students to learn quicker and better through interactive and animated 3D objects. Students can make mistakes and learn from them without causing any damage or harm to the actual patient. Thus, it is an all-round learning kit that provides advancement to healthcare students’ needs. The kit is designed in a convenient form so that the students can learn anytime, anywhere.