Explore and experience: mobile augmented reality for medical training

Albrecht U-V, Noll C, von Jan U. Explore and experience: mobile augmented reality for medical training. In: Lehmann CU, Ammenwerth E, Nøhr C, eds. MEDINFO 2013. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. Vol 192. Amsterdam: IOS Press; 2013: 382-386.In medicine, especially in basic education, it may sometimes be inappropriate to integrate real patients into classes due to ethical issues that must be avoided. Nevertheless, the quality of medical education may suffer without the use of real cases. This is especially true of medical specialties such as legal medicine: survivors of a crime are already subjected to procedures that constitute a severe emotional burden and may cause additional distress even without the added presence of students. Using augmented reality based applications may alleviate this ethical dilemma by giving students the possibility to practice the necessary skills based on virtual but nevertheless almost realistic cases. The app "mARble{\textregistered}" that is presented in this paper follows this approach. The currently available learning module for legal medicine gives users an opportunity to learn about various wound patterns by virtually overlaying them on their own skin and is applicable in different learning settings. Preliminary evaluation results covering learning efficiency and emotional components of the learning process are promising. Content modules for other medical specialtiesare currently under construction