International Response Immersive Learning Project

VR project to support the WHO’s Emergency Medical Teams programme

This project was developed in partnership with the World Health Organisation, the UK’s International Search and Rescue team and NGO stakeholders. The project is designed to support the WHO’s Emergency Medical Team programme.

Near-Life, in partnership with the stakeholders, created a remote learning project to deliver an immersive, VR experience for medical professionals who are due to be deployed as part of an emergency response. The learning is based on the ‘best practice’ Blue Book guide developed by the WHO and looks at security related scenarios – taking users on a journey from arrival in-country to the type of security related challenges they may face – anything from civil unrest to car jacking.

The immersive, dramatic scenarios put users in situations where they have to make decisions that influence the outcome of events. The immersive technology gives remote learners a realistic experience of what it might be like to face potentially challenging situations. In addition, the authoring technology behind the immersive content was built as an add-on to Near-Life’s CREATOR authoring tool – meaning that anyone can utilise the technology to create immersive and interactive VR experiences.

The software uses a cutting edge Web VR approach – meaning the limitations around making content accessible is vastly reduced.