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Simulators Revolutionize Surgeon Training
(Jerusalem Post) Eytan Halon - "We're leading a revolution in how physicians are trained," said Ran Bronstein, vice president of 3D Systems, which has been pioneering the development of three-dimensional and virtual reality-based medical and surgical simulators. "Pilots have been using simulators for many years. But there are more physicians than pilots....This is one of the nice applications of virtual reality, using it to train and impact the healthcare community." Bronstein has headed the development of state-of-the-art simulators for more than two decades with Simbionix, the company he founded, which was acquired for $120 million in 2014 by California-based 3D Systems. At the company's Tel Aviv offices, developers wearing virtual reality headsets perform invasive spine surgeries, endovascular operations, endoscopic and laparoscopic procedures, and robot-assisted operations. Nearly 5,000 of the company's simulators are now installed in facilities across the globe. One particularly demanding requirement is the need to mimic the unique bodies of each patient. "In 2007, we started to develop a breakthrough technology: patient-specific simulation, no longer using a generic case but analyzing MRI and CT scans and automatically transporting them into the simulator," said Bronstein.