The Challenges and Rewards of Creating Something Worthwhile

By Emily Tarver, MD

It was three years ago, Monday, January 13, 2020 and I was nearly two years into my academic medicine journey, with a budding interest in simulation as a teaching tool for medical education. On that day, I had a phone meeting with a virtual reality (VR) software company, hoping to discover a simulation program to use for resident education in emergency medicine. My budget was $0 but my curiosity was incalculable.

I listened with great enthusiasm as they described their virtual simulation program and was immediately ready to sign up. But my jaw dropped when the final cost was revealed, and I realized that I would need tens of thousands of dollars to fund this journey — and that was just for an annual lease.

When the price for this software was unveiled, I realized immediately that this Mississippi educator was completely out of her financial league. So I spent the remainder of 2020 searching every virtual simulation product that I could find, looking for a good fit. After months of meetings and demos, I learned a ton about the world of virtual simulation and quickly realized that there was no such product that would meet all my needs. This year-long search was challenging and exciting but solidified the three characteristics that I desperately needed in a software product for virtual simulation: affordability, adaptability, and accessibility.

Everything I tried would have one of or two of these attributes, but none of them had them all. The solution? I decided to develop my own program. And why not? When you’re starting from ground zero, you might as well shoot for the moon!

So 2020 came and went and the pandemic loudly underscored the critical need for all of us to re-examine how, where, and why we teach in health care training. Through all my demo-ing and sticker shock, I quickly learned that the economic hurdles of quality medical education are almost as insurmountable for the low budget or no-budget clinical educator as the medical-industrial complex is to an uninsured patient.

By Spring of 2021, I remained wideeyed and optimistic that if an affordable, adaptable, accessible program didn’t exist then, by damn, I would make one myself. The unique necessities of the pandemic facilitated funding for pandemic-proof medical education, and that’s when my institution entrusted me with funding, made available from the Higher Education Emergency Funds 2 Act (HEERF 2). By this time, a seasoned clinician, simulation educator and researcher from Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Dr. Todd Chang, introduced me to a London-based medical education software developer, named AiSolve. The branch of AiSolve that specializes in meded VR software development was i3 and, once I had secured funding from HERRF 2, we were off to the races.

I spent $390,000 on the software and $20,000 on hardware to build SimGym, the software that I envisioned would hold my three A’s for educators such as myself: affordability, adaptability, and accessibility. It is now January 2023 and SimGym is well underway. We began development in November 2021 and although things are moving slower than I expected, I have full faith that my i3 team and I will build something unique, great, and fabricated from the 3 A’s that form the cornerstone of this learning tool.

Since those early days in 2020, I have grown in my appreciation for simulation as an invaluable teaching and learning tool. SimGym will hopefully form the cornerstone of how I teach, outside of the clinical setting and allow others the same opportunity for affordable, adaptable, and accessible simulation.

About The Authors

Dr. Tarver is an assistant professor of emergency medicine and medical co-director of simulation at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi