A medical student from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center tests the new Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) Simulator developed by Professor Suvranu De and his research team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Professor De is working to make virtual surgery feel like the real thing. He is a specialist in haptics, the science of touch. He is developing virtual surgery simulator that will allow surgeons to touch, feel, and manipulate computer-generated organs with actual tool handles used in actual surgery. This means when you use the virtual scalpel to cut into a virtual kidney, it will feel like the real thing the tool youre using has an advanced touch-feedback system that exhibits the same resistance, sponginess, flexibility, etc as a real kidney. Along with providing objective, measureable data with which to score assess budding doctors not unlike how budding fighter pilots first practice and are assessed on flight simulators virtual surgery training could reduce the need for using animals and human cadavers for medical training.

Electronic Medical Prescriptions