SimClinic - An auxiliary tool for evaluation on clinical case settings

Abstract

Physicians have one of the most important professions in society. It is imperative to make sure that they are up to the challenges they will face throughout their careers, and that can be achieved by having the adequate evaluation methods. However, current assessment methods do not take advantage of the latest technologies. With this in mind the objective of this project was to test the potential of serious games as auxiliary assessment tools for doctors or students. Serious games allow the simulation of cases that are hard to recreate in real life, and therefore they can complement other types of evaluation methods that are already used. To achieve the proposed goal, an application was developed where the objective is to solve a cardiology-related clinical case using all actions that a doctor can usually perform in such settings. The application records the user's actions and rates them according to Key Performance Indicators. These rating tools serve to automatically evaluate how the player performed. So, in order to test their effectiveness, the automatic scores were compared with ratings made by healthcare professionals on the same sequences of actions. The final results were very satisfactory, showing some similarities between the tool and the opinion of the medics. The difference between both results reached a maximum of 30%, occurring only in rare situations. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.