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The Role of Haptics in Medical Training Simulators: A Survey of the State of the Art

<26>The paper provides the first systematic analysis of the use of haptics technologies for training medical procedures, with over 130 references given. New insight is provided with respect to the aspects to be considered in the deployment of haptics technologies in medical training. In particular, the six most critical research issues in this field are identified in the paper’s critical discussion of current work. Inevitably, compromises are made when incorporating haptics into a medical simulator but nevertheless the technology has a growing and important role to play in the medical domain. This has been particularly the case for minimally invasive procedures and also when a tool such as a needle or surgical drill needs to be simulated. Open surgery and procedures where practitioners must grasp soft tissues directly with their hands remains a research challenge. Emerging technologies will continue to offer the potential of creating higher fidelity simulations, but should only be used where a clear training benefit can be proven. This paper demonstrates that haptics technologies have reached this stage and will have a pivotal role to play in the ability to maintain skills competence and reduce the need to train on patients. The paper is making significant impact on the community with an IEEE Xplore Usage metric of 1487 in less than two years (January 2011 to November 2013), 75 citations (Google Scholar), and 40 citations (Scopus). The authors (from Bangor University, the Italian Institute of Technology and US company SimQuest Inc.) were also invited by the journal editors to participate in a Podcast interview, accessible from the journal web site (http://www.computer.org/portal/web/toh).