Npuls and DUTCH join forces

XR technology and simulation education offer new opportunities for education and healthcare. For example, it is possible to replace parts of the process of learning skills with XR, enabling more effective and efficient learning. Think of learning how to insert an IV with a physical simulator, or conducting an intake interview with a digital avatar.

This collaboration will enable us to offer user-friendly and clearly organised Extended Reality (XR) content for education professionals and learners in further education and at university medical centres. Over the next five months, we will be working towards delivering the first version of the Simulearn platform with a proof of concept. Our end users will play a central role in this. In April, we will present the initial results and determine the next steps to take.

DUTCH stands for Digital United Training Concepts for Healthcare. The aim of DUTCH is to replace 50% of practical training with simulation training, thereby increasing training capacity. In doing so, DUTCH aims to contribute to solving the staff shortage and reducing waiting lists in healthcare. DUTCH is a national consortium of hospitals, training institutes and the business community. By making good use of physical, digital and XR simulation training, students and healthcare professionals can start working in healthcare faster and better prepared. This reduces waiting lists in healthcare and allows training to be used more efficiently.

Npuls is looking at which barriers in the field of XR can be removed nationwide in order to deploy it effectively on a broad scale. The XR pilot hub is investigating how we can make more XR content more readily available to education professionals and learners. SURF, the ICT cooperative for education and research, is building the proof of concept for the platform and ensuring that it complies with the HOSA and MOSA principles.