Workplace safety: Sant'Anna School, University of Pisa and Azienda Ospedaliero-universitaria Pisana (AOUP) launch a research project on health emergency management in the workplace

The Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, the University of Pisa and the Azienda Ospedaliero-universitaria Pisana (AOUP) have launched a new collaboration on a research project on the management of health emergencies in the workplace. The initiative involves the creation of a training course for company first-aid officers to be carried out in an immersive virtual reality environment.

In particular, the project involves the Institute of Mechanical Intelligence of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, under the direction of Massimo Bergamasco, professor of Applied Mechanics of Machines, and Marcello Carrozzino, a researcher affiliated with the Institute, with the task of creating virtual scenarios, taking care of their 3D modeling, event simulation and interaction management through devices and sensors that will make the learner's virtual experience as realistic as possible.

"The trainee will find himself implementing some rescue maneuvers and procedures in a virtual environment that will precisely reproduce his real workplace, grappling with different emergency scenarios designed ad hoc. In this way, his technical and non-technical skills will be tested in the face of a series of variables that are difficult to reproduce in ordinary training contexts, with a degree of emotional involvement closer to what would be evoked by real events", comments Rudy Foddis, project coordinator and professor at the Department of Translational Research and New Technologies at the University of Pisa.

Among the training activities reproduced in the virtual environment will be Blsd-Basic life support defibrillation procedures. Essential to this part of the project activities will be the collaboration with the Aoup Medical Simulation Center, directed by Alda Mazzei, which will provide the environments and tools for the beta-testing phases of the project and for the efficiency and effectiveness evaluation aspects of the training procedures.

Also participating in the project are Poupak Fallahi, a professor at the University of Pisa, Riccardo Marino and Salvio Perretta of the University Preventive Medicine Departmental Section, Rodolfo Buselli and Aldo Mignani of the Preventive Medicine Operational Unit and Francesca Puccini of the Anesthesia and Resuscitation Transplantation Operational Unit.