Dear ScopingSim supporters and donors,

I'm SO EXCITED to share the wonderful news: the EngagePitt™ ScopingSim campaign SURPASSED its goal, bringing in a total of $5,642! 

Thank you all for making this project possible, by generously donating and taking the time to share ScopingSim with your families, friends, and colleagues. We've now got enough funding to purchase the equipment and materials for the ScopingSim prototype, and we'll put the extra funds toward additional mannequin simulators.

Because of you, undergraduate students at the School of Information Sciences will be able to continue with the ScopingSim research and development, and gain valuable, real-world application problem-solving. Because of you, medical professionals in-training will not only learn better scoping techniques for bronchoscopies, colonoscopies, and endoscopies, but also will be able to practice and improve their diagnostic skills.

And on that note, it's time to go shopping! We'll be back in touch as the lab set-up progresses, and will keep you up-to-date with project news.  

Thank you all so very much for making ScopingSim, our first School of Information Science crowdfunding project, a smashing success!

With great appreciation,

Dmitriy and the ScopingSim team

Where have these past six weeks gone? It's hard to believe we've got less than 12 hours left in the ScopingSim campaign! 

If there is anyone you know who might want to give, please let them know or remind them about ScopingSim. There is still time to make a contribution!

On behalf of the ScopingSim team, we want to thank everyone who has donated to and spread the word about the project. We are so grateful for your support and look forward to sharing the final outcome tomorrow!

With great appreciation, Dmitriy

Last week was pretty exciting for ScopingSim! On Thursday, the undergraduate research team had a great visit at the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation, Education, and Research (WISER).

By chance, we also ran into my father, Dr. Andrew Herlich, who helped set up the simulation lab 20 years ago. I’m so proud to be a part of the ScopingSim team, not only because it’s continuing the work of my father and his colleagues, but also colon cancer and diverticulitis have affected many members in my family.

On behalf of the team, I want to thank our supporters for getting us nearly half way to our goal of $5,500, by making a contribution and sharing the word with family and friends.

However, we’ve only got 6 days left in the campaign!

Please continue to help us spread the word – by email, social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), phone, text – because EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS. 100% of donations go directly to purchasing materials for ScopingSim and not one cent will be deducted for credit card fees.

Thanks for helping us make ScopingSim a reality!

Amy Herlich, Director of Constituent Relations

I am delighted that the School of Information Sciences (SIS) has launched its first crowdfunding campaign, ScopingSim, on the EngagePitt™ platform.

Information sciences is a vital field to the preservation and betterment of our society. SIS develops future IS professionals to find, organize, store, and systemize that vast amounts of information that we encounter every day. The need for such professionals can be found in all aspects of our society including academia, government, corporations, and, of course, healthcare.

The ScopingSim project is a great example of both the creativity of our students and faculty as well as the importance of cross-functional collaboration. By partnering with colleagues in health sciences, the ScopingSim team was better able to understand the training needs of medical professionals. This understanding combined with their applied knowledge and skills enabled the ScopingSim team to develop a more advanced and cost-effective version of a tool that has existed for decades.

Many thanks to everyone for your support. I am confident you will make the ScopingSim campaign a success. I look forward to more opportunities for our school to utilize the EngagePitt™ platform.

Dean Ronald L. Larsen

As we began to work on synchronizing motions of a simulated scope with the contents of recorded procedure videos, we quickly realized that the task is not as simple as we initially expected. While designing the authoring system, we collected a lot of feedback from clinicians who perform endoscopies, colonoscopies, and bronchoscopies on a daily basis, as well as from educators who might create teaching cases based on recorded procedure videos. Unfortunately, as it often happens in software (and in product) development, no amount of imagination or experience can substitute an actual tangible prototype.  

We learned that our design was missing one critical component: automation. While our initial design provided a rough tool similar to a video editor that allowed authors to identify “teaching moments” in a recorded procedure video, manually synchronizing video timestamps with the motions of a simulated scope are just too cumbersome.  

A promising solution came from an unexpected place: computer games.

In May, a group of Learning Technologies Lab collaborators attended the IEEE SeGAH 2016 4th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health.  A presentation there showed a novel implementation of a myoelectric gesture control armband called MyoBand - a bracelet that reads electrical signals from arm muscles and converts them to a digital output. The project’s objective was to train amputee veterans how to use prosthetic limbs. The researchers placed a Myo band on the stump of the amputated limb and asked the subjects to control video game characters and navigate complex virtual environments using muscle signals.  

This approach gave us an idea to use these armbands to record the scope’s motions, at the same time that the procedure video is being recorded by the scope’s camera.  Initial results are very promising. It seems that we’ll be able to capture and record physicians’ hands and arms motions during a scoping procedure and tie them to video timestamps. This should greatly simplify the simulation authoring system and drastically improve authoring experience.