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Osso VR, developer of a virtual reality surgical training and assessment platform, received $222,596 from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research Program. Funds will support research and development to advance the product with automation and artificial intelligence technology.
The Osso VR offering provides realistic, haptic-enhanced interactions in an immersive, repeatable training environment—an alternative to cadaver lab education. Individuals or teams wearing off-the-shelf gaming hardware, like Oculus, insert themselves into a virtual O.R. with all that they need to perform a procedure. Users are scored after each training module based on mastery of steps, precision and efficiency. Assessing technical skill in virtual reality has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes by highlighting a surgeon’s procedural mastery or shortcomings after completing each of Osso VR’s training modules.
Justin Barad, M.D. is CEO of Osso VR. In an interview last year, he told BONEZONE, “Fellowship-trained surgeons need to use a device 100 times before they can use it proficiently. A surgeon will try a new technology, something will go wrong, and they’ll perceive it to be unsafe, so they’ll revert to an older technology that is not as good for patients and the hospital. This is a massive problem within every specialty. What we’re trying to do is bridge the course-to-case gap by preparing people for in-person bio skills courses and reinforcing and assessing them afterward—and in some cases, replacing certain courses—to increase adoption of new technology.”
Osso VR is currently focused on training for orthopedic and spine procedures, but will also expand to other specialties.
Dr. Barad commented, “Having a validated, objective and scalable assessment tool is a critical component of surgical safety, as it is has been proven that a surgeon’s skill is directly correlated with patient outcomes. This grant indicates growing support for solving one of medicine’s greatest challenges that will safely provide patients with the highest value procedures and technologies available to them.”
