OSF HealthCare has partnered with Summit Venture Studio to licence and commercialise Medical Cart AR, an augmented reality training application developed by OSF Innovation.

This app is designed to help healthcare providers swiftly locate vital equipment during emergency situations.

It tackles the challenge of training staff, who have limited access to medical carts in emergency settings due to hospital policies.

Medical Cart AR allows users to simulate their specific medical carts, simplifying the identification of essential equipment without disrupting patient resources.

It offers full customisation, a user-friendly interface, and includes a built-in timer.

MedVis director Kyle Formella said: “I presented a prototype of the app at a national conference in 2020 to gain feedback about its practicality and immediately gained interest from others in the simulation space.

“With no national standard for medical cart setup, these life-saving tools vary from organization to organisation.

“That makes it difficult for clinicians to recall their contents, which is why ongoing training is so important.”

The OSF Innovation Studio's Medical Visualization (MedVis) team developed this technology in collaboration with clinicians and faculty at the University of Illinois, with an aim to improve the readiness of healthcare workers.

OSF Innovation transformational innovation & commercialisation Director Brent Cross said: “Medical Cart AR was attractive to us for a number of reasons.

“MedVis built the app in a way where anyone can use it without support from a technology expert. It’s also rare for a concept to gain so much attention from potential customers in its prototype phase.”