The 2016 International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) held January 17-20 in San Diego, California provided the setting for the 6th Annual Serious Games and Virtual Environments Arcade and Showcase. The Arcade and Showcase featured exhibits from veterans of educational simulation technology as well as from a variety of newcomers using virtual environments and games to support clinical education. Participation in the Arcade and Showcase provided both thought leaders and attendees with an opportunity to interact and collaborate with one another. In addition, entries were judged based on innovation, implementation of technology, game elements, the vision for how the game/virtual environment can impact education in the health professions, and the presentation of the idea at the showcase. Based on these criteria, the following entries were singled out from the crowded field of excellent presentations for special recognition by a panel of judges:

Faculty Division
Winner: Decontamination Training Delivered Using Virtual Reality – Sharon Farra¹, Eric Hodgson², and Sherrill Smith¹
(¹Wright State University, Dayton, OH United States; ²Miami University, Oxford, OH United States)
Runner-up: Virtual Gaming Pediatric Clinical Simulation – Margaret Verkuyl¹, Lynda Atack¹, Paula Mastrilli², and Daria Romaniuk³
(¹Centennial College, Scarborouth, Canada; ²George Brown College, Toronto, ON Canada; ³Ryerson University, Toronto, ON Canada)

Small/Emerging Company Division
Winner: Brush Up – Dov Jacobson¹
(¹Games That Work, Atlanta, GA United States)
Runner-up: Body Interact – The Virtual Training Hospital – Pedro Miguel Pinto¹
(¹Take The Wind, Lda, Coimbra, Portugal)

Large Company/High Resource Organization Division
Winner: MReal: The Beating Heart Experience – Eric Bauman¹, Reid Adams², Brian Pelletier³, Greg Vaughan³, Sarah Aken³, Mike Beall³, Jason Williams⁴, Michael Carney⁴, and David Pederson⁵
(¹Institute for Research & Clinical Strategy, Middleton, WI United States; ²Learning Games Network, Madison, WI United States; ³DeVry Medical International’s Institute for Research & Clinical Strategy, Sarnia, ON Canada; ⁴DeVry Education Group, Downers Grove, IL United States; ⁵St. Kitts; ⁶DeVry Education Group, Boise, IDUnited States; ⁷DeVry Medical International, United States)
Runner-up: VHA Employee Education System/SimLEARN Serious Educational Gaming Products Code Cart Game – Aurelio Maldonado¹ and Leslie Dubow¹
(¹VHA Employee Education System, Orlando, FL United States)
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Viewers will be interested in an article about the first group of students to graduate from Rush University Medical School in Chicago, USA who have used the i-Human virtual patient tool throughout their training. The original article appeared on the BusinessWire.com website. Here is a short URL that will take you to the full the article: http://go.uic.edu/LiVE_iHuman

I am also working on a report on the integration of virtual patients in the medical school curriculum and would be very interested in hearing from anyone in the SIG who would like to share how their institution is using them. Post here or write to me at "This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.".
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Just a quick note for those of you who are interested in virtual patients. The University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies is making their Virtual Human Toolkit available to academic researchers. The toolkit has a number of components that would seem to be useful for medical education purposes and can be mashed up with 3rd party software offering great potential.

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To learn more, go to "vhtookit.ict.edu".
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