A virtual reality endoscopy, a world first with the HTC Vive Focus

19 December 2018

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) affects more than 1 million people in France, and this syndrome is often poorly known or late detected.

Faced with this situation, the Dom’Air Santé and RESMED teams called on SimforHealth’s expertise to create a training tool for the detection of this syndrome in order to improve patient care.
In collaboration with healthcare professionals specializing in this syndrome, our teams were able to create a virtual reality sleep endoscopy simulation.

In the real life, the patient is asleep in the OR and the doctor can then, through the nasal voices, observe the respiratory voices of his patient in the sleeping phase and observe the different phases of apnea of the latter.

Thanks to the latest innovations of our Research & Development department, we were able to virtually reproduce the nasal cavity and pharynx of a sleeping patient, recreate an endoscopic procedure to visualize the deformations and thus allow the observation of the different phases of apnea of the latter.

Immersed in the virtual operating room, the practitioner – as well as the patient – will be able to visualize the apnea phases during an OSA and better understand this syndrome.

Thanks to our close partnership with HTC Vive, our teams have developed this latest digital simulator with the HTC VIVE FOCUS autonomous headset.
Unlike the previous headsets, this headset has no connection and the user can therefore move easily and independently.

During our presentation, more than 100 doctors, technicians and DM manufacturers were able to test this latest innovation with a real interest in the implementation of this educational tool.

In collaboration with DomAir Santé and Resmed, the practitioners participating in this congress were able to discover this new sleep endoscopy simulator during several workshops led by Dr. Lilia Poulain, ENT physician at the Libourne Hospital Centre, co-author of this simulator.