Virtual training is an important and vital resource for learning interventional techniques - but without proper accreditation and regulation it can be as useless as a computer game, according to Professor Jim Reekers.
Reekers, a member of the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) executive committee, told Interventional News during the 27th CX Symposium that societies such as CIRSE and the European Society of Vascular Surgery need to make strategic alliances with companies to ensure they set the standard of training to be provided by virtual reality.
"It doesn't mean the companies aren't allowed to show their products, but it means the training by itself - the regulation and the certification, should be done by the societies' research and educational officers," he said.
"A taskforce has already been set up in the US to look at this, which I'm part of, because they see the powers of virtual training but also the dangers of it being completely controlled by the companies."
Companies providing virtual training take the burden of cost away from hospitals and societies - with an average machine in Europe costing approximately 250,000 euros. But Reekers pointed out the companies are not doing it for charity, but to showcase their products.
The profession's three big issues for regulating virtual training lie in who is being trained, what they are learning and how it is then evaluated. There is a danger that people with minimal interventional experience can build up a level of confidence from virtual training which in Reeker's words is "absolutely based on nothing".
"You can't get experienced and inexperienced people all coming to a machine and after one and a half days they're 'all fantastic' - it's a disaster!" he said.
"Virtual reality is in its infancy at the moment and has great potentials, but it's dangerous if we don't know where to position it. Juniors, residents, experienced clinicians - everyone needs their own curriculum, their own training program. We should only train experienced people for special procedures, the goals for training inexperienced people should be completely different.
"Nobody has ever decided exactly what we want - you go to a company, you put in a catheter, they say 'you're doing a good job' and they give you a certificate - but it's a computer game! It is completely separate from real life."
Reekers believes it is especially important to monitor virtual reality training as the technology is rapidly expanding.
"In five years time you will have machines which are going to be so perfect - because the technology evolution is going so fast - that they will really image real life," he said.
"Then there will really be the danger of people getting that level of confidence not based on a broad interventional experience but just on doing one type of intervention. It is like a surgeon only trained to do a cholecystectomy without general surgical skills."
Virtual reality training was a popular feature of the 27th Charing Cross International, with the inaugural virtual training village enjoying a steady steam of visitors to explore the latest technolody from Mentice, Simbionix and Limbs and Things. The EVAST Vascular and Endovascualar Training Day, sponsored by Cordis, Guidant and with the support of Mentice and Limbs and Things, was another popular event offering both virtual reality and hands-on training.
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