ARCHIE MD INC. SBIR Phase I Award, March 2021

Abstract ArchieMD is developing a mobile medical training application that will facilitate rapid dissemination of continuously evolving knowledge and procedural skills to nurses, which will allow staff to quickly expand capabilities to meet needs in the event of a pandemic. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put an immense strain on health care systems worldwide, and the nursing shortage—which long predated the onset of the pandemic—has further exacerbated the challenge of human resource management as hospitals struggle to take on the growing number of patients. As a result, many nurses are being re-allocated from other departments and out-of-hospital positions, assuming new responsibilities for which they have limited training, due to time and resource constraints and the need for instructor oversight, which places an additional burden on senior staff. Furthermore, standard-of-care procedures may quickly become outdated as clinicians learn more about the novel disease, and as hospitals are compelled to modify procedures to better manage limited resources. To close this gap, ArchieMD proposes to develop a mobile application that will support self-guided instruction, training, and testing on key respiratory therapy procedures. The mobile app format supports accessibility and rapid roll-out of updated procedures, and ArchieMDandapos;s dynamic, anatomy-augmented visuals have been demonstrated to significantly improve learning comprehension. For this Phase I project, ArchieMD will 1) Develop simulations for oxygen therapy and CPAP administration, incorporating realistic internal anatomy visuals to support deeper learning, and 2) Carry out a user study to evaluate the performance of the medical training application in transferring knowledge and skills in these procedures. Additive instructional, training, and testing modules will leverage incorporated visuals to efficiently convey contextual information in early learning stages and support long-term retention of concepts. By including dynamic internal anatomy visuals over the virtual patient, users are able to gain a deeper understanding of the procedureandapos;s real-time impact on the patientandapos;s bodily functions and health outcomes. Collaboration with nursing students at the University of Michigan for the user study will demonstrate usability and functionality of the application, as well as inform future development needs. Successful completion of these specific aims will provide a proof-of-concept for the proposed training platform and result in development of a minimum viable product. As envisioned, ongoing development will result in a commercially viable mobile application with a suite of medical procedure training modules, along with in-hospital task managing features that will assist with distribution of re-allocated staff based on training module completion status. This technology will support self-guided, just-in-time training to reduce burdens on upper-level staff and expand the capabilities of the nursing workforce to tend to patients during a current or future pandemic. These easily accessed training simulations will result in improved clinical skills, a flexible taskforce, and ultimately, better patient care.Narrative In the midst of the current pandemic, human resource limitations have compelled hospitals to re-allocate nursing staff to meet the needs of the overwhelming number of hospital-admitted patients infected with COVID-19. However, these personnel may have limited training in key clinical procedures such as oxygen therapy and CPAP administration; systematic training and oversight from already overburdened senior staff is infeasible; and there is no efficient method to disseminate new information on evolving standard-of-care procedures. ArchieMD is developing a mobile medical training application with anatomy-augmented visuals that will provide easy access to high-fidelity, self-guided training, as well as rapid, synchronized roll-out of procedure updates to nurses, ultimately leading to improved human resource management and patient care during a pandemic.