Infinite, Multiuser, VR Surgery Classroom Launched

A whiteboard, a virtual environment, and the ability to write comments in real time…all of that and more is the latest offering from London, UK-based FundamentalVR, specialists in training surgeons via immersive technology. The company’s new offering, Fundamental Surgery, “Teaching Space,” allows multiple users to visit a virtual classroom for interactive lessons and meetings.

FundamentalVR’s platform already includes multiuser capability, allowing unlimited users to practice, learn, and teach together inside an operating room (OR). With Teaching Space, any number of users can gather in a virtual classroom with an interactive whiteboard, where they can conduct lessons, discuss a procedure before going to the virtual OR, or review practice sessions.

Instructors and their trainees can interact, write notes on the whiteboard, and share ideas from multiple locations. Users can also seamlessly transition between Fundamental Surgery's virtual OR and Teaching Space.

The Teaching Space is also meant to assist medical device and pharma companies, that can bring individuals together for briefings, Q&A sessions and one-on-one training; the company also notes that Teaching Space holds promise for medical sales for training, compliance and virtual sales calls with “digital twins” of instrumentation.

Richard Vincent, CEO and co-founder of FundamentalVR, described some of the customer reaction to Teaching Space to OTW, “When we launched our multiuser capability earlier this year, which allows unlimited users to enter a single virtual OR, we received positive feedback from our customers who found the feature critical during the pandemic as it allows them to continue lessons with their trainees and peers in different locations. We expanded our platform further with what we are calling ‘Teaching Space' to provide our users with even more options to meet, train and practice virtually with unlimited people. The main challenge was to provide maximum flexibility and scale to the product which we are very pleased with the outcome.”

“Whether it’s a class meeting in Teaching Space for a lesson before meeting in our virtual OR or a medical device company hosting a training session or remote proctoring with clients based around the world, we wanted all of our users to be able to easily meet in Teaching Space and have the tools they needed to conduct lessons, training sessions and more.”

Looking forward, Vincent added, “Our goal over the next year is to continue to scale Fundamental Surgery as quickly as possible to provide the medical devices companies and pharma companies with a platform that will help accelerate the safe and compliant use of their products. Med device/pharma companies right now have the ability to offer hosted lectures, sales team training or one-to-one training/coaching. There will be a continued drive towards customized enterprise solutions for medical device and pharmaceutical companies, using not just Multiuser but also our HapticVR and @HomeVR modalities, which provide different business solutions for individual business use cases.”

Teaching Space is available to current Fundamental Surgery customers at no additional cost.