UF received a grant that could help medical professionals save soldiers’ lives on the front lines.
UF and U.S. Army Research Laboratory Simulation and Training Technology Center researchers received a $1.75 million grant to develop portable medical simulators.
Instead of military medical personnel having reduced access to training when they are overseas, the training could follow them, said Dr. Samsun Lampotang, a professor of anesthesiology in the UF College of Medicine and the director of the UF Center for Safety, Simulation and Advanced Learning Technologies.
Lampotang’s team is working on five medical simulators to treat specific parts of the body. The simulators will be able to fit in a padded case that can easily be transported.
One simulator will allow medical professionals to practice helping soldiers with head injuries, while another will let medics give regional anesthesia to wounded soldiers.
The team used 3-D printing and human medical scans to make some of the models realistic, said Dave Lizdas, the simulation engineer.
Lizdas said making the simulators robust and sturdy was challenging.
“They get pretty beat up,” he said.
Military medics will begin training for the simulators in the next two years, Lampotang said.
“Eventually, if we show this is useful and really makes a difference in patient outcome, then it would probably be commercialized,” he said.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 8/29/2014 under the headline "Grant helps medical training"]
