Real-Life Baby Simulator

Reported October 2006

CHICAGO (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- He cries, blinks and even breathes on his own! He's not real, but he sure looks it! This baby simulator is the newest way to train doctors, and it's about as close to the real thing as it gets.

During a real simulation, the medical residents don't know what's wrong with the baby, but they have to find out. After giving air, performing an intubation to open his airway, and learning about his history, they correctly diagnose the infant with shaken baby syndrome.

"It's very important for us to actually experience this before we experience the real thing," medical resident Juanita Mora tells Ivanhoe. "I think it's a, it's a golden part of our training."

Children, and especially babies, don't visit the emergency room as often as adults. That's why it's hard to train doctors on how to handle infant emergencies.

"I think he's as lifelike as you could make him without being real," Madhavi Pola, also a medical resident, says.

Pediatric intensivists create different scenarios on a computer program. That information is fed to a microprocessor inside the baby and then to a monitor that displays the infant's vital signs.

"We can manipulate this child's physiology, meaning the way the body works," Paul Severin, M.D., a pediatric Intensivist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, tells Ivanhoe.

Doctors can check his pulse and change his heart beat, blood pressure and breathing rate. They can give him an IV and medication, and he's the size of a real infant with skin that's pliable.

"We've been working very hard to move from using just the plastic mannequins into a really almost living-breathing type of device to do something resuscitations," Dr. Severin says. "And it's very exciting!"

Exciting for the medical residents of today -- who will soon be the doctors of tomorrow.

Doctors envision the next generation of simulators to be the size of a newborn -- or even a fetus. One other interesting fact -- the baby simulator can be changed to a female if need be.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Paul Severin, M.D., FAAP
Rush University Simulator Lab
Chicago, IL
(312) 942-6194
paul_j_severin@rush.edu

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Washington, D.C. 20036-5104
(202) 785-0017
ieeeusa@ieee.org
http://www.ieee.org

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