SimRated Past, Present, and Future: Our Story
At SimRated, we are committed to delivering the most effective way to teach and assess medical procedures, and we set ourselves to the highest standards. This came about from our personal experience in the medical field as practitioners and our passion for supporting the next generation of healthcare providers.
When Michael, Keith, and I founded SimRated, we did it with a few ideals in mind. We wanted to create a medical procedure education business focused on 1) educational content by clinicians, 2) hands-on training, and 3) rigorous assessment. Our experience in simulation had shown us that there was exponentially more money being spent on technology than educational content; in reality, it should be the opposite.
Quality educational content with skilled educators was where the real learning was occurring. We strongly supported hands-on training but knew an experienced simulation educator could engage and educate better with a low-cost toy doll than an inexperienced simulation educator with a $100,000 manikin! Too often, we find expensive equipment and technology purchased without the educational content to support them and then left to collect dust and go obsolete. We also knew that without rigorous assessment, there would not be the level of engagement required for medical procedures. With rigorous assessment embedded in the curriculum, we found this would allow us to know with certainty that our trainees could perform the medical procedures. This was our starting point.
Five years later, and thousands of procedures have been trained and assessed, we have largely stuck to original ideals. SimRated utilizes high-quality educational content developed by the clinicians who perform the procedures and employs only the necessary technology required for the trainee level. As the years have passed, we have added digital badges to help our trainees represent and share their achievements. The digital badges allow them to easily store, explain and share their achievements with employers, educational institutions, and other healthcare professionals. While we never forget our original ideals, we continue our research and development to improve our trainees' experience.
What is next?
Moving to the future, we are preparing for the next advances which can facilitate medical procedure education while being thoughtful only to introduce these advances when we know they will make significant impacts on our goals. Here are a few advances we are exploring. We recognize the importance of verifying learned competencies. With greater adoption of blockchain technology, we look to utilize these technologies to improve trust and ensure patients receive the best care. In addition, we see a future in our program where virtual content is blended into the training environment. This has many implications for learning. For example, students may be presented with learning material without ever having to look away from their equipment or receive real-time feedback overlaid on top of training equipment from built-in sensors. Some of these technologies will make the cut, and some will not, but we are investigating them all and more. Ultimately, SimRated is a company that believes in educational content developed by practicing clinicians. We believe technology should only be utilized 1) to facilitate content delivery and assessment, 2) if the cost substantiates the benefit, and 3) it improves equity and access. We thank our customers for their trust in this journey and are excited about what the future holds.
Cameron Ricks MD RN
Founder and CEO