Development of the airway management training system WKA-3: Integration of evaluation module to provide assessment of clinical competence and feedback module to reproduce different cases of airway difficulties

Abstract

An active training system is characterized by providing quantitative information of the trainee's performance of the task to the trainee, simulating real-world conditions of the task, and assuring training effectiveness. For this purpose, the authors have been developing an Airway management training system. In particular, we have previously presented an evaluation model system to acquire quantitative information for the trainee's performance, and an actuated model system for real-world conditions of the task. In order to fulfill all of the characteristics of the active training system; in this paper, we would like to propose an integrated system, Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway No.3 (WKA-3) which integrates the function of both system models. For this reason, we have focused on embedding sensors and actuators with the link drive mechanism and the wire drive mechanism to a conventional patient model towards the development of a patient robot. In this paper, we present WKA-3 how to design the mechanism and how to redesign several organs to embed the sensors for the measurement of the trainee's performance. A set of experiment have been carried out to doctor subjects using the WKA-3 to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system by asking doctors to evaluate the proposed system.

Review of the swallowing system and process for a biologically mimicking swallowing robot

“…A team of engineers from Waseda University of Japan have developed an evolution of devices to assess practitioner proficiency of endotracheal intubation [81][82][83][84][85][86][87]. The devices exhibit similar design constraints to the proposed swallowing robot, as well as integrated sensing, and control.…”

Development of Airway Management training system WKA-4: Provide useful feedback of trainee performance to trainee during Airway Management

“…1. Due to the complexity involved in the development of Patient Robot, we proposed the development of an Airway Management Training System [8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…To do so, the WKA-2 has wire driven mechanisms with 16 embedded actuators and 16 Tension/Compression Detection Sensor Systems (TCDSS) [9][10]. In 2008, we also developed Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway No.3 (WKA-3) which can reproduce Patient Scenarios (Figure 1) which can not only simulate the time invariant (static) characteristics but also the time variant ( dynamic) characteristics of patients, and this enables the operators to mutually interact with the system in order to simulate the real-world conditions of the task [11][12]. It has 6 embedded actuators and 56 embedded sensors.…”

“…These sensors can provide objective assessments of training progress and useful feedback to trainees. In particular, Virtual Comliance Control was implemented in each of the joints of the WKA-3 in order to simulate human muscle stiffness [11][12]. In 2009, we also developed Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway No.4 (WKA-4) which integrates each of the functions of previous systems such as WKA-IR, WKA-2, and WKA-3 into the one system, and simulate high-fidelity simulated human anatomy such as the external organs, facial skin and skull, and internal organs such as the pharynx, larynx, and esophagus [13][14].…”