Immersive Audio Simulation Transforming Empathy Skills

Empowering Nurses Through Immersive Audio Simulation

SIMFONIK is inspired by the multi-award winning XR experience Within Touching Distance, an artwork that uses VR and human touch synchronised to explore the real-life experiences of a patient - from a childhood bedroom to a care home.

Different to other Simulation Solutions, SIMFONIK is the world's first Transformative Simulation Platform, using mindset change and deep learning to address a severe gap in empathy skills across the healthcare workforce.

The immersive audio simulations in SIMFONIK have been carefully developed with Patients, Nurses, Researchers and Health Simulation Partners across the UK, to ensure all scenarios accurately reflect the real lived experience of patients and nurses in the health and care systems.

What is SIMFONIK?

How does it work?

Using the latest developments in bone-conducting technology, SIMFONIK offers a transformative experience for students enabling them to experience patient lived experiences first hand.

Bone-conduction technology converts sound into mechanical vibrations transmitted through the skin and temporal bone to the cochlea, bypassing traditional air conduction transmitters. This means the ears remain open to sustain normal conversations.

This allows SIMFONIK to achieve crisp, clear sound reproduction even in noisy environments and eliminates the need to spread sound waves through the air, allowing each participant to receive different audio tracks as part of the same simulation.

SIMFONIK

Unique features that set SIMFONIK apart from other simulation providers.

Scalable Technology

Individual instructions and scalable technology: Every student is engaged as active participant in every scenario.

Patient Experience

Patient scenarios create human, real, authentic and embodied representations of real-world lived experience.

Deep Engagement

SIMFONIK's unique emotional depth of engagement addresses hard-to-teach skills such as empathy.

Former NHS nurse, and Professor of Healthcare Simulation and Workforce Development, Sharon Weldon said of the research project: “Within Touching Distance is a perfect example of the power art has to push the limits of healthcare simulation and make healthcare professionals think beyond their own reality. ZU-UK’s use of technology and touch to raise the importance of empathy is a powerful way of bringing the essence of what care is back to the forefront of what we do".

Professor Sharon Weldon

President
Association for Simulation Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH)

Greenwich Learning and Simulation Centre