USE OF PATIENT SIMULATION IN SUPPORT OF BIOMEDICAL INDUSTRIES

Various simulation activities have involved the pharmaceutical or medical equipment industries. Numerous centers (perhaps the University of Florida at Gainesville was the first) offer training to executives and sales representatives of equipment and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The simulator allows these individuals to gain some understanding of the clinician's task demands during patient care and the situations in which their company's drugs or devices could be useful. At the Boston Center for Medical Simulation, this course is dubbed "Anesthesia for Amateurs." Other industrial uses include training personnel in the use of novel pharmaceuticals. Simulators have featured in a multifaceted approach to launch of the opioid remifentanil. Simulators were used to train the manufacturer's representatives and clinicians in safe use of the drug. Besides offering important educational benefits, the industrial activities are an important source of income for simulation centers to help defray the costs of training students and residents.

Simulators have been used to conduct research on human factors issues in the development of new monitoring and therapeutic devices.^[147] The simulator also provides a unique test bed and demonstration modality for preprocurement evaluation of the usability of medical devices from different manufacturers. In our own hospitals (Stanford and Tübingen, Germany), simulators enabled us to conduct evaluations of prototype monitoring systems that were not yet approved for clinical use and thus could not be evaluated in a preprocurement clinical trial. In addition, it was possible to train anesthetists in the application of remifentanil with the simulator, even before remifentanil was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States.^[148]