During residency, every surgeon’s worst fear is to enter the professional medical field undertrained and unprepared. The lack of objectivity in the preparation and the insufficient exposure of innovative tools to future surgeons is impacting their delivery. Thanks to the integration of Virtual Reality in the field, many groundbreaking tools are being introduced to surgeons and their pupils in an attempt to standardize education. Today, Dr. Rosie Sendher, along with Dr. Erica Fisk, will sit down to chat with Dr. Justin Barad, who is contributing with his own solution to this problem.

Dr. Justin Barad is the founder and CEO of Osso VR, an innovative surgical training and assessment platform. With a burning passion for medical technology and with the unique experience of practicing surgery in a gorilla, he is convinced that proper education and surgical training should be available for every single resident in the world. 

This episode contains fresh information surrounding the motivation, building and technology behind Dr Justin’s platform, plus an invitation to reflect on how career exploration is deficient for students, going as far back as high school. Listen now to learn in detail how medical VR is so different from gaming, and a detailed glance into the world of possibilities that technology has to offer for medical education, training and its future.

In this episode we chat about:

  • (03:53) - Providing future surgeons with groundbreaking training tools for their careers —  “Every surgeon’s worst fear, at least when they’re in training, is that they’re going to graduate undertrained or not able to do a great job.”
  • (24:20) - Standardizing objective training and mentoring residents — “We give certain feedback within VR and then certain feedback afterwards so you can review your performance.”
  • (31:01) - Granting access to equal career exploration opportunities for high school and college students — “I feel like if we can expose people to actual orthopedic procedures sooner, maybe they’ll get more excited about it.”
  • (37:11) - On Osso’s mission and the possibility of education beyond physical barriers — “Whether you’re in New York, Los Angeles, Ethiopia or Tanzania, you should have access to the same quality and training opportunities.”
  • (41:54) - How surgeons are thrown into unexpected situations and complications inside the operation room — “Maybe you’re googling something or you have a textbook that was useful thirty years ago, but there’s not a lot you can go on often.”
  • (45:34) - The technologies behind modern surgical simulations — “To them, they don’t know what realistic is, so then, when you show it to surgeons it feels weird and very distracting.”

Resources

Osso VR

Dr. Death Podcast

Learn more about the Medical Matrix Podcast by subscribing to Apple Podcasts, and make sure to check out our YouTube channel

This show is being produced by StudioPod, a full-service podcast company based in San Francisco. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.