'I started working for the User-centered design lectoraat and CMGT'

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screenshot VRambo game
Daan

Six years ago, Ambulance Zorg Groningen (AZG) came to the Hanze University of Applied Sciences with the need to solve a problem regarding burn wound percentages assessed differently between paramedics and the burn wound centers. At a certain point the topic switched because of multiple reasons; one was the VR wasn’t suitable for this situation. They started shifting ideas into high complex situation. This started to larger project called VRAMBO.

'I, Daan Tuinstra, started this project during my bachelor of Game Design Development (GDD) in our second year and worked closely as a student together with AZG for the following six years. I finished my bachelor three years ago now and I now work for the Creative Media & Game Technologies (CMGT) as a teacher/coach and researcher.'

'VRAMBO is and was a larger project that helped paramedics train highly complex situations. You can think of situations with large numbers of victims: driving accidents, shootings, collapsed buildings etc. The goal for the paramedics is to communicate with their partners and the alarm room during the situation while assessing victims and classifying (triage) them.'

'Paramedics have a hard time training these specific situations because they are difficult and very costly to replicate. Therefore, together with student projects and the User-centered design lectorate we gathered all the information we needed to simulate such a situation.'

'After I finished my bachelor, I worked full-time on this project and started working for the User-centered design lectorate and CMGT. My specific role was to develop the application together with my co-worker. My previous experience working on the project did help me understand what I needed to develop for the paramedics. We created a VR-Simulation application that could train paramedics in these highly complex situations.'

'The current state of the project is that it is used by some paramedics companies to train, however it is still in early stages and it is unclear if they will continue to use it for the long term. We know that it works based on the thorough testing, but it is up to the paramedics to take the next step and integrate it into their own training.'

'With all the classes of Virtual Reality, I became somewhat of an expert in the field of VR. Nowadays, I spend most of my projects on VR development and give classes on it.'

Fields of interest

  • Science and Engineering