Mammoth Lakes, CA — September 1, 2013 – i-Human Patients, Inc. (IHP) today announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant will provide IHP with $750,000 over the next two years to help continue development of the i-Human Patients® service technology platform.
i-Human Patients is a cloud-based Software as a Service that improves medical and healthcare student proficiency in assessing and diagnosing patients. Users access the service’s rich graphically-based content via the Internet using a desktop, laptop or tablet computer. Like a flight simulator for clinicians and students, the service simulates a complete patient visit to help develop critical competencies. Users assess interactive, animated patient avatars based on questions they ask about their medical history and symptoms, and on a variety of virtual physical exams they can perform online.
They then confirm potential diagnoses with relevant tests they order and interpret online, and finally develop a treatment plan. In addition to developing patient assessment and diagnostic reasoning skills, i-Human Patients provides a clinical context for learning the basic sciences, including physiology, anatomy, histology, pathology, and pathophysiology. The system utilizes a patented competency engine to provide comprehensive feedback and coaching to students at every step in their learning process. Individual student and aggregated class analytics are available to instructors, providing objective performance data. Over 100 simulated patient cases have been developed and made available by leading medical educators for the platform. In addition, i-Human Patients contains a point-and-click authoring system that instructors can use to create new cases and exercises. These cases can optionally be published under the Creative Commons licensing model, enabling medical educators to rapidly create, customize and share new educational content. Since the i-Human Patients service is cloud-based and being designed to work on any web browser with no proprietary client software required, students will be able to use the service anywhere and anytime. This will enable faculty to assign patient cases as homework, and then review students’ experience in class, highlighting key aspects of the encounter to enhance learning. Instructors can also assign cases as in-class or lab projects or use them as tests to ensure students have developed the desired assessment and diagnostic competencies.
“This National Science Foundation SBIR Phase II grant will help IHP develop key technical enhancements that should accelerate the commercialization of our pioneering i-Human Patients simulated patient encounter service,” said Norm Wu, chief executive officer. “The i-Human Patients cloud-based service is being developed to give medical educators in the U.S. and other countries around the world a cost-effective, rapidly scalable supplement to apprenticeship training that will help students develop their patient assessment and diagnostic reasoning skills rapidly and fully.”
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a highly competitive program that encourages domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development that has the potential for commercialization. Through a competitive awards-based program, the SBIR program enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive for them to profit from its commercialization. By including qualified small businesses in the nation’s R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs. The program incentivizes and enables startups and small businesses to undertake R&D with high commercial reward. Award evaluation criteria include a significant market opportunity and transformational technology with a large societal or commercial impact.
More information on i-Human Patients and IHP is available at www.i-human.com.
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About i-Human Patients, Inc.
i-Human Patients, Inc. (IHP) is a developer and provider of “virtual” medical training products and services including its flagship i-Human Patients simulated patient service. Before i-Human Patients, IHP developed the JEMS Award winning Medical Emergency Response Simulator (MERS) series, distributed by Brady/Prentice-Hall Health; and the Aurora Gold Award winning CPR/AED Simulation Trainer, distributed by MedicFirstAid and Philips Medical Systems. IHP is based in Mammoth Lakes, California, USA. IHP operates a subsidiary, i-Human Medical Education Private Limited, in Chennai, India.
i-Human Patients is a registered trademark of i-Human Patients, Inc.