Major Incident Scenario Simulation In Virtual Environments (MISSIVE)

Project summary

Major Incident Planning is a national requirement for NHS trusts and other emergency services. Continuous and effective methods of training are important to ensure skills and safety levels are maintained. Current field exercises and tabletop training tools are extremely valuable, but have limitations centred largely on cost, accessibility, data capture and fidelity. This may result in suboptimal training and assessment of both technical (clinical) and non-technical skills, such as teamwork, management and leadership skills. Ultimately, this means that the organisations do not maximise the potential from these exercises.

Virtual worlds have potential to provide a versatile, low cost, immersive and safe training environment for single or multiple agencies to train in major incident response. However, the role of virtual worlds has not been established in this area.

Imperial College London has been funded by the Department of Health and the Health Protection Agency to assess the feasibility of using online virtual world exercises as an adjunct to current training methodologies.

Aims

1. To establish the requirements for a successful training exercise in the virtual world.
2. To establish the essential skills required for a successful major incident response
3. To develop and pilot virtual world scenarios that will assess response to a major incident by three key groups/pathways involved in major incidents: HART Paramedics, an acute hospital trauma team, and the major incident response plan of a hospital.

For more information on the activity of Imperial College in virtual worlds, please visit http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/surgeryandcancer/divisionofsurgery/research_themes/virtualworlds/