- Date published
Virtual training
It’s your first day on the job. You’re a new hire in CoxHealth‘s Environmental Services department, and you’re learning how to clean patient rooms – virtually.
What might seem like video game fun to some is quickly becoming serious business. As organizations look for new and innovative ways to onboard and train employees, more and more are turning to virtual and augmented reality.
VR and AR present exciting applications for businesses – and CoxHealth is one of many local organizations jumping on board.
Innovating inside the enterprise
CoxHealth is no stranger to innovation. The healthcare system partners with the efactory annually to host the CoxHealth Innovation Accelerator. Each year fifty employees from across the system gather to pitch their ideas for improving service, reducing costs, and fostering innovation.
Environmental Services manager Teresa Shawley was part of the 2018 Innovation Accelerator. She pitched the idea of using virtual reality to train staff in the Environmental Services (EVS) department. Her idea won over CoxHealth leadership, and secured funding from the system’s innovation budget to bring the project to life.
Meet Self
What’s a local healthcare system to do when they find themselves in the market for cutting-edge virtual reality work? You might think you need to find a huge development studio in a major city to get the job done. Fortunately, CoxHealth knew otherwise.
The system sought out Self Interactive, a local development studio based out of the efactory. And it wasn’t their first (virtual) rodeo. The team had already created state-of-the-art virtual and augmented reality trainings for plenty of other businesses.
The team at Self Interactive worked with Shawley and CoxHealth’s Environmental Services team to build an interactive simulation of the training process.
Once the VR headset is on, participants find themselves inside a high-fidelity simulation of a patient room. The training then leads the participant through the process of disinfecting the room after a patient is discharged.
“It is like a video game, but when you put the headset on, you are in that room,” Shawley says.
Tacit training
Self Interactive has created a framework of virtual and augmented reality software designed to help businesses. Called Tacit, the software can help onboard employees, train existing employees, and even showcase products or services to clients.
By recreating real-world environments in VR, Tacit helps organizations eliminate many of the costs and complications associated with traditional training.
“Our goal was to standardize and streamline the onboarding process in a consequence-free environment. The results have been great so far,” says Self Interactive founder Charlie Rosenbury.
“I am really proud of with we have accomplished with Self Interactive,” Environmental Services director Ronnie Lightfoot said. “Our community has some amazingly gifted, forward-thinking people. Self is a great partner that listened very well to our needs and put them into a VR solution that is world class.”
We love this stuff
For us, this is what it’s all about.
We love working in the corporate innovation space to help major companies think outside the box. We love seeing efactory clients make cool things. And we really love when we get to play a role in bringing it all together.
From the employees being trained with cutting-edge technology to patients receiving top-quality care, everybody wins with partnerships like this.
