The past year has been a pretty strange one for all of us. We had to deal with adversities and challenges that we could have never been prepared for. When it comes to work-life, some of us have started new jobs and have gone almost a year without meeting our colleagues, and on the other hand, some don’t remember what the office looks like anymore. Over the past few months, some of the i3 Simulations team has been coming back to the office, leading to us wanting to socialise and network more. We have actively been seeking ways to make the most of the current climate and have somehow, in a matter of 3 weeks, moved from virtual avatar-based events to live, in-person events.
From the 23rd to the 25th of September, we were the Gold Sponsors at a first of its kind, virtual event called Shift Medical. Shift Medical is Europe’s largest medical XR congress and expo hosting over 65 industry leaders from across the world as speakers. We were motivated to partner with Shift Medical when we discovered that the event’s objective is to strengthen the open and structured knowledge exchange to increase the medical XR adoption rates. Our mission at i3 has always been to democratise the availability of medical expert knowledge for training and education, so we instantly felt connected to the event. Additionally, being a conference for medical XR, the platform allowed us to showcase a 3D model from our training simulations to give attendees a glimpse of our capabilities. We invited several partners from across the world to join us on the platform, to share their experience in adopting XR for healthcare training. We hosted two panel discussions with industry experts like Dr Todd Chang from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Dr Suruchi Kothari from Agilon, Dr Emily Tarver from The University of Mississippi Medical Centre and Mr Tipatat Chennaivasin, Co-founder of The VR Fund. The platform opened up corporate rooms and networking spaces between the panel discussions and presentations to meet with attendees and host live demos of the training simulations.
Shift was an event that fit in well with the regulations we have been working with for the past year, but with the UK opening up for business, not having real, in-person conversations felt like a huge missed opportunity. So when we saw that SEHTA was hosting an expo in Tower Bridge, London, we knew that we just had to be there.
We are one of the few health tech start-ups part of the South East Health Technologies Alliance’s (SEHTA) SimDH Cohort 2. The program supports health tech startups and SMEs to innovate, develop and deliver new products and services. As members of the Cohort, we were amongst the first companies approached by SEHTA to exhibit at the SEHTA 2021 International MedTech Expo & Conference on the 8th of October.
i3 Simulations spun out in the middle of the pandemic before which all the products were part of the parent company, AiSolve Limited. This expo would be the first time we would showcase our extensive suite of XR training simulations, including modules for emergency medicine like cardiac arrest and hypotensive shock. We look forward to meeting our current partners and network with potential partners while also hearing from some notable speakers who would be sharing their knowledge and learnings over the past year. The event aims to drive collaboration between businesses, care, clinicians and academics, and we are eager to do our bit to contribute toward to success of the event.
While Shift gave us a platform to virtually demonstrate our simulations, at SEHTA we would be hosting live demonstrations by putting interested attendees in headsets to experience the immersive training. If you would like to meet the team and trial our products, do get in touch!
