OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital launches Enduvo

Enduvo announced OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital ofIllinois is using its software to add experiential instruction to helppediatric cardiologists, pediatric heart surgeons and nurses improve care forpatients. Enduvo allows users to import 3-D models and medical images, enablingthe creation of virtual reality (VR) experiences. Once inside the virtual room,medical teams can explore a patient’s anatomy. They can expand the virtualmodel of the heart, view it from any angle, overlay 2-D x-rays on the model,and record their observations.

“Educating a surgical team about a patient’s condition usingthis technology helps to minimize the surgical time in the operating room andhelps to reduce patient stress,” said Dr. Mark Plunkett, chief, Pediatric andCongenital Heart Surgery, OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois. “With Enduvo, weare able to thoroughly explore and learn about our patients’ heart conditionsin a 3-D real-world like environment. We can easily import 3-D images of ourpatient’s heart. Once inside Enduvo, we interact with the ‘virtual heart’imaging and can expand, walk through, and explore to better learn about ourpatient’s condition. We can narrate our observations and then provide guidedtours of the patient’s heart to educate the surgical team, our patient andtheir family before a procedure.”

The success of Enduvo within the pediatric cardiology teamhas led OSF Children’s Hospital to expand the use of Enduvo to help patientsunderstand their medical conditions and to develop curriculums for nurses aboutheart defects and other topics. “We are just at the beginning of using thistechnology,” said Kristi Ryan, APN, Adult Congenital Heart Program, OSFHealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois. “We see tremendous potential forapplying Enduvo to a variety of topics. Having people be able to experiencewhat they are learning will allow us to better prepare our nurses for theirjobs at the hospital.”

Recent advances in 3-D printing allow cardiologists tocreate replicas of their patient’s heart and use these models to strategizepatient care options, educate medical teams and minimize time in addressingcomplex procedures. “However, 3-D printing has its limitations,” said Dr. MattBramlet, a pediatric cardiologist and co-founder of Enduvo. “The models are notscalable and it is hard to see anatomical relationships. Virtual realityextends the use of a cardiac model by allowing doctors to walk through theheart and see how different structures connect and might interact. Building VRcontent has traditionally been a costly and out-of-reach endeavor. However,with Enduvo’s immersive teaching and learning platform, anyone can create andshare augmented and virtual reality content in minutes without any codingexperience.”