Outpatient Surgery recently posted a Q&A with Will Adams, architect and "guru of virtual reality design."
OS: What gave you the idea to use virtual reality for OR design?
Adams: We were working on renovating the ORs at the University of Washington Medical Center. The project manager learned about what we were doing with the technology and got excited about its potential to replace physical models of the new spaces, which they had already spent $300,000 to make. We created virtual mockups of 4 ORs, and they were blown away.
OS: How does the virtual view improve the end product?
Adams: Part of the problem of design and construction is that it's very difficult to conceptualize drawings and models and to know what it will feel like to actually work in the space. The amount of information you pick up by being immersed in a virtual OR is so much greater, because it's very intuitive — it's how you would interact with the room in the real world. It's interesting to put people in a virtual environment that they have a stake in, to hear their comments about the space.
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