Session D4: New Technologies in Developing Animal Alternatives

Chairs: Jonathan Balcombe (USA) and Alex Davies (New Zealand)

D4: Medical Training Using Virtual Reality: Fewer Animals, Safer Patients
Jonathan Balcombe. Immersion Medical, 55 W Watkins Mill Rd, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20878, USA. jbalcombe@immersion.com.

This presentation will review the growing use of virtual reality (VR) simulators in medical training and discuss their potential to replace and reduce animal use. The processing requirements of a real-time simulator recently became attainable on a personal computer. Thus, commercial VR medical simulators are now appearing on the market. VR simulation has pedagogical, clinical, and economic advantages over traditional medical training methods. A leading developer of these devices now has training modules in intravenous, endoscopic, and endovascular procedures. Published research shows that these devices measure what they are intended to measure (construct validity) and improve performance (content validity). Currently, live pigs, dogs, and other animals are being used for training in endoscopic and endovascular procedures for which commercial VR simulators now exist. VR simulation also has the potential to benefit animals through enhanced veterinary training, though this application of the technology has yet to be explored. Replacement of traditional methods with simulators will depend largely on making instructors aware of their existence and their demonstrated advantages.

D4: Technological Advances That Enhance Teaching Using Animals, and the Application of the Three R's
Alexander S. Davies. Institute for Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. A.S.Davies@massey.ac.nz.

The inventions that have progressively contributed to education have never offered opportunities as vast as in the digital era, even though this is still scarcely twenty-five years old. In this time, digital handling of data led first to text processing, then to bitmap and vector graphics, and now, to digital sound and movies. As these advanced, the storage methods became larger, faster, easier, and cheaper. The advancement of technology has been so rapid that the standard of most teaching aids now available is well below what can currently be achieved.

We are confronted with an unprecedented opportunity for applying the principles of reduction, refinement, and replacement of animals in education. Not only are the visual teaching aids improved by digitizing, but all aspects of their development, including the ease, higher speed, and low cost of creation, editing, copying, distribution and access, are improved, as well.

Several examples will be given, including access to interactive panoramic movies, animated sequences to explain difficult concepts, on-line tutorials, and image databases using digital photography, radiography, and other diagnostic methods, as well as the production of desktop movies. The speed of technical advance brings its own problems, but the challenges and possibilities for developing viable alternatives to the use of animals in teaching are vast.

D4: How Can We Encourage Teachers to Use Computer-based Alternatives: The UK He Experience
David Dewhurst. Learning Technology Section, Faculty Group of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XD, UK. d.dewhurst@ed.ac.uk.

In the UK, most of the animals used in teaching are in lab classes (wet labs) in pharmacology and physiology. There now exist a large number of computer-based alternatives to many of these classes. The first part of the presentation will describe some examples of the wide range of alternatives now available and the differences in approach they have taken. Evaluation data from both retrospective and prospective studies, which have been carried out to evaluate how successful they may be in meeting teaching and learning goals, will also be presented.

However, despite the demonstrable success of these alternatives, in the UK, at least, the evidence is that, while the take-up of these by many universities is significant, few have been effectively integrated into curricula. There are a number of possible reasons for this, and one implementation strategy, adopted in the UK and designed to overcome this difficulty will be described. This strategy has been to develop flexible (locally editable) 'off-the-shelf' wraparound support materials for computer-based alternatives, recognizing that most teachers do not have the time, and sometimes, the expertise, to do this. Pilot studies have demonstrated that this strategy can be successful.

D4: Virtual Physiology Labs: Concepts and Teaching Experiences
Hans A. Braun, Horst Schneider, Bastian Wollweber, and Karlheinz Voigt. Institute of Physiology, University of Marburg, Deutschhausstr. 2, D-35037 Marburg, Germany. braun@mailer.uni-marburg.de.

For several years, teaching programs of the "Virtual Physiology" series ("SimMuscle," "SimHeart," etc.) have been used success-fully at several hundred universities and high schools. These programs offer virtual realizations of classical "animal labs" that allow students to do experiments closely approximating the real world: all settings of the virtual devices are freely adjustable, and mathematical algorithms guarantee the physiologically adequate reactions of the preparations, even considering their physiological variance. Due to these particular features, the virtual labs have replaced courses with animal preparations in many cases, and, as it turns out, the programs have major didactic advantages. For example, additional experiments that are too difficult to be physically carried out in a student lab can be conducted. It has also been observed that students are more active in the virtual lab. They are performing the experiments essentially on their own, without having to be concerned about destroying the preparation and without negative emotions from the killing of animals. The tutors' positive impressions were recently confirmed by a students' evaluation of "SimNerv."