CAE Healthcare: Simulation to Perfect Healthcare Training and Patient Safety
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CAE Healthcare: Simulation to Perfect Healthcare Training and Patient Safety

Robert Amyot, President, CAE Healthcare A pilot landing a jet on an icy runway or a surgeon performing a heart surgery— these scenarios from two almost antithetical professions are connected by one aspect: practice. The stakes are exceedingly high wherein a small error can lead to a catastrophe. This is where simulation offers an ideal premise for practicing unlikely events. Marking its inception with flight simulators, CAE Health [NYSE: CAE] has mastered the art of training both surgeons and pilots, recreating high-risk situations into a tangible reality. According to CAE Health, every day 300 people—the equivalent of a Boeing 737 full of passengers—lose their lives in the U.S. owing to medical errors. Moreover, studies reveal that preventable medical errors result in more than 400,000 deaths each year in the United States and are the primary cause of deaths in the country. Surgical patients account to 50 percent of hospital adverse events. With medical errors being the major challenge of today’s physicians, regardless of patients' life expectancies, there is a worldwide shift in the method of medical education towards experiential—‘hands-on’ medical learning. Simulation-based medical education is widely accepted as a valuable tool for better clinical practice, as it provides a safe, controlled environment in which problem-based learning is developed, and competencies are practiced in high-standards. Backed by a 70-year record of industry firsts, CAE Healthcare works towards one vision: to be the trusted training partner of choice to enhance efficiency, safety, and readiness, worldwide. In doing so, the company offers its innovative simulation-based training solutions that help healthcare professionals provide safe, high-quality patient care.

CAE Healthcare replicates 3D anatomy to a high degree of fidelity through its end-to-end spectrum of simulation solutions that include patient, interventional and ultrasound imaging simulation, and state-of-the-art audiovisual and learning modules. The company’s extensive array of simulation-based products offer efficient training to hospitals, medical institutions, emergency response teams, military sectors and nursing, respiratory and allied health programs. Each CAE Healthcare product is developed in alliance with the world’s renowned clinicians and clinical educators who aspire to ensure critical patient care, regardless of physiological complications and unforeseen situations.

Users can have access to a library of content that is designed explicitly for simulation-based medical teaching and learning, which significantly increases learner’s knowledge, intrinsic motivation, and self-efficacy in clinical practice and healthcare decision-making. The company has developed over 600 Simulated Clinical Experiences (SCEs), with patient records, learning objectives, performance measures, evidence-based resources and equipment supply lists for medical learners to practice technical skills for emergency and patient care. The company provides simple cases for beginners, and also an array of multifaceted scenarios and procedures to aid practicing clinicians improve preparation and readiness before they enter the hospital environment.

Here’s a scenario: Marie works in a medical school, and she believes that the world gets a bit better with each new well-trained healthcare professional. However, something is missing in her simulation center—How can she tell how the students are doing and how can she convince others to invest more in simulation and prove the benefits afterward? How does she turn her beliefs into rich insights?

This is where CAE’s LearningSpace tool comes into the picture, designed with flexibility and power in mind. The company’s learning management system and audiovisual recording platform—LearningSpace Essentials— facilitates training and helps instructors achieve their desired educational endeavors. CAE LearningSpace is coupled with its free and unlimited simulator training courses, enabling trainers and instructors to gain deeper learning based on their specific program needs. It is also built upon its existing resources for providing educators with an indispensable and scalable tool for scheduling, conducting, recording, debriefing and critiquing their simulations, and improving center performance at a significantly less cost.


Augmented and virtual reality can accelerate learning and provide shared training experiences in a more immersive and engaging clinical learning environment


CAE Healthcare’s strength lies in its ability to identify customer’s requisites, create and implement tailored solutions for advancing healthcare practices and improving patient outcomes globally. The company has also partnered with leading scientific and professional societies and educational institutions such as the American College of Chest Physicians, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Montreal Heart Institute, WakeMed Center for Innovative Learning, Baystate Medical Center and others to develop best-in-class simulation-based curriculum and cases for enhancing the academic excellence in the field of modeling, simulation and training. In addition, the content has also been endorsed by leading societies that give trainers a safe and controlled environment to learn. The content is frequently updated in the curriculum based on the latest clinical practice guidelines such as AHA, international ultrasound training guidelines; and in collaboration with subject matter experts.

A New Frontier in Simulation

CAE Healthcare recently certified NAIT, a leading Canadian School of Health and Life Sciences as a CAE Healthcare Center of Excellence, for the most advanced healthcare simulation training technology for diagnostic medical sonographers and technologists, respiratory therapists, and paramedics. Students in NAIT can deploy the real-world simulations, combined with state-of-the-art equipment, and models to grasp every component of learning within a variety of settings like ERs, ORs, and hospital wards. Learners can make use of the innovative educational environment and make critical mistakes and then learn from those mistakes, enabling them to train themselves as a perfect professional in assessing and diagnosing patients.

“As a CAE Healthcare Centre of Excellence, NAIT will offer a real-world test lab for interdisciplinary, simulation-based education that will advance healthcare and patient safety,” says Dr. Robert Amyot, president of CAE Healthcare.

New virtual training facilities and courses aim to offer aspiring healthcare professionals more high-tech, hands-on experience alongside traditional teaching techniques. “We are on the cusp of a new frontier in simulation for healthcare,” extols Amyot. “Augmented and virtual reality can accelerate learning and provide shared training experiences in a more immersive and engaging clinical learning environment. Our engineering team is beginning to explore possibilities with the Microsoft HoloLens, and we look forward to offering it as a key training solutions technology to our industry partners.”

The company has rolled out an ultrasound training simulator integrated with the Microsoft HoloLens, which allows the learners to interact and move freely within a clinical training environment, without physically going to the training facility. Being renowned as the first company to bring a commercial Microsoft HoloLens application to the medical simulation market today, CAE Healthcare empowers trainees to examine 3D anatomy for generating an ultrasound image. For example, while scanning an animated heart, lungs or abdomen, students can seamlessly scrutinize how the ultrasound beam cuts through anatomy to generate an ultrasound image in real-time with ease. Besides, learners can also gain a clear understanding of human anatomy and how its circulatory, respiratory and skeletal structures are integrated. Learners can also practice placing cardiac devices or implants with speed and precision before they perform procedures on real patients.

Continued Enrichment of Medical Care

CAE Healthcare has also developed best-in-class training prototypes with the medical device industry that are integrated into its healthcare simulation portfolio for further revolutionizing the future of patient education and training with the use of holographic computing.

"We are on the cusp of a new frontier in simulation for healthcare"

Further, the company continues to define the global training standards with its ground-breaking virtual-to-live training solutions to enhance patient care and safety. CAE has a broad global presence, with 8,000 employees, 160 sites and training locations in over 35 countries. Each year, it trains more than thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide to do more active learning and practicing of the human body in an easy and realistic way. The company has also successfully sponsored more than 150 Human Patient Simulation Network (HPSN) conferences throughout North America, Europe, and the Asia- Pacific region to transform healthcare education, by bringing together end users, vendors, simulation program managers, medical professionals, trainees and specialists along with thought leaders, influencers and innovators in the healthcare simulation industry.

CAE Healthcare looks forward to sponsoring the HPSN premiere patient simulation event and networking conference 2018, where a myriad of collaborative workshops, hands-on learning opportunities, resources and simulation-based medical education (SBME) solutions will be offered to healthcare providers for further enhancing clinical competency and patient safety.