Technology & Innovation Community of Practice (TechInnCoP)

Innovation and technology are among the pillars of simulation in healthcare. There are literally thousands of creative, exciting projects going on in simulation centers, companies, and university laboratories around the world. The purpose of this CoP is to get some of these practitioners in one room (physical or chat) and channel some of that creative energy to make our impact even higher. We also hope to provide more visibility to our activities within the SESAM society.

The main goals of the CoP in brief:

Reach technicians working in simulation centers and innovators belonging to academia and industry
Get technical specialists more involved in the SESAM society
Promote networking and collaboration between simulation centers, companies, and research institutions
Work toward a structured approach to simulators validation

The simulation technician on the job

Fetal head with sensors

Book Cover

Vocal fold surgery simulator

The Team:

				Serena Ricci (chair) Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Genova, Italy. She teaches Medical Simulation and leads the Joint lab for Emerging Technologies in Simulation. She is on the board SIMMED, Italian Society for Medical Simulation. Her research interests include the use of technology and physiological data to develop new educational tools and improve medical and surgical training and evaluation.
				Pilar Alzuguren (secretary), research assistant of the Medical Engineering Laboratory of the School of Medicine of the Universidad de Navarra, Spain. She worked for more than twenty years coordinating and carrying out preclinical studies. Her job consists of designing simulators and is developping two main projects: the development of a vocal fold surgery simulator and an ultrasound-guided venipuncture simulator.
				Willem van Meurs (interim vice-chair), Invited Full Professor of OBGYN and Pediatrics, University of Porto. Since 1991 Willem was instrumental in the development of acute care training simulators at the Universities of Florida and Porto. Commercialized by Elevate Healthcare, these simulators significantly reduced the need for training on live animals and real patients. Willem has (co)authored the books: Modeling and Simulation in Biomedical Engineering, The Dolls’ Engineer, and Learning Physiology in Context.
				Jiří Travěnec (member) is the Deputy Director for Technology at SIMU, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. After obtaining an engineering degree in Information Technologies in 2016, he became involved in the construction of the largest simulation center in Europe. Since 2020, he has been responsible for AV and IT technologies at the facility. Innovations in simulation and medicine are a crucial pillar of his team's work. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Healthcare Simulation and a passionate advocate for healthcare simulation and the technologies that support this field.
				Katherine Harrison (member), Specialist Technician for Pharmacology and Simulation at the University of Bristol, UK. She has a BSc (Hons) in Pathology and Microbiology and has worked as a technician across both clinical NHS laboratories and higher education laboratories. As the sole simulation technician for the university, she works alongside the lead academic for the simulation centre to design and deliver a repertoire of 14 physiology teaching scenarios across a range of bachelor’s degrees (approx. 1800 students a year), using virtual patient-based, model-driven simulators.