A Virtual Environment for Training and Assessment of Surgical Teams

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) can improve the way remote users interact with one another while learning and training skills on a given task. One CVE´s possibility to the health area is the simulation of medical procedures in which a group of remote users can train and interact simultaneously. Health area has been benefited from the advent of Virtual Reality (VR) especially in education area, where these systems present some advantages over traditional teaching methods such as: cost reduction for training, reducing the use of guinea pigs and anatomical specimens in laboratory practices as well the use of interactive teaching approaches. Another VR´s feature is the ability to monitor user´s actions for assessing training performance. Thus, statistical models are used in order to check whether a group performed the procedure correctly or not. The goal is to allow the formation of teams and the development of individual skills to work together. This work proposes and discusses one CVE´s architecture for supporting training and assessment of team skills, during surgery simulation.