Second Life- Hospital Sim with live EMR/CIS software

Here’s a screen shot of Knoh Oh at the Ann Myers Medical Center’s Admission Desk checking out the day’s schedule. To the right of Knoh is an Electronic Medical Record and Clinical Information System application being accessed from within the Second Life client.

It’s more of a proof of concept than anything else, but it does work, and I think would help enhance medical simulations. I could also see it as a great way to train people on how to use the software. One could have several people accessing the same EMR/CIS system in various areas of the hospital sim and run patient’s around.

I hijacked the SL client’s help window, and through it logged into an open source medical software demo. (Technical details at end.)

One of the great advantages to open source is that you really can get the code for free/cheap. Further, since there are no proprietary secrets, there is no reason to hide the software, so the software is easy to try. There are several open source medical software vendors, a few have on-line demo sites, some even have live CD’s one can easily boot up on one’s own PC’s. Wikipedia has a nice list of Free and Open Source Medical Software. One can set up the software and allow others to access it without worrying about licenses.

What I did not do, was create an actual object in SL. No other avatar can look over Knoh’s shoulder and see the screen. It is like a HUD- part of my client. However, other people can log into the same EMR/CIS and use the system as I am. You would get the same result by running the EMR/CIS in a separate browser…just not as cool screenshots 😉

This particular picture features the ClearHealth software running from their demo site. I cannot vouch for their software, but it seems to be of the right weight, covers a multitude of tasks, and works well in the window. Big thanks to ClearHealth for providing an online demo! (I have not spoken to them about it yet.)

How did I do this? A bit of background for some, but the in-world help screen can be used as a web browser (recent Windows SL client, YMMV.) In the SL client go to the toolbar’s drop down “Help” then “In-World Help”. Paste in a URL into the help’s search window and hit return.

PLEASE DO NOT ABUSE THE DEMOS. These companies pay for their bandwidth and need to maintain their severs. If you really want to utilize a particular vendor’s service, contact them. They will most likely be happy to help you out.

THX to ClearHealth and Ann Myers Medical Center who had no idea what I was up to, but are hopefully cool with it.