Medicus- Laparoscopic Sugical Skills Training and Assessment Tool Navy SBIR FY2010.1 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2010.1 Topic No.: N101-094 Topic Title: Medicus- Laparoscopic Sugical Skills Training and Assessment Tool Proposal No.: N101-094-1223 Firm: Aptima, Inc. 12 Gill Street Suite 1400 Woburn, Massachusetts 01801 Contact: Jared Freeman Phone: (202) 842-1548 Web Site: aptima.com Abstract: While on deployment, many surgeons - including those who specialize in obstetric, vascular, cardiac, and orthopedic surgery - spend the bulk of their time performing trauma surgery. Such prolonged lapses in practice can result in the decay of specialized knowledge and skills. This becomes a major problem upon the surgeons' return stateside, when they are expected to resume their specialty duties with little or no re-credentialing. With this in mind, Aptima proposes to develop the MedicusTM Laparoscopic Surgical Skills Training and Assessment Tool, which applies automated measurement of psychomotor skills to drive deliberate practice-based training for decay-prone skills. When complete, MedicusTM will collect real-time measures of the surgeons' performance that are measured using the position, orientation, and/or manipulation of the surgical instruments. MedicusTM will then calculate mathematical formulae-based measures of the surgeon's performance, score the surgeon's performance by comparing it with those of surgical experts, and provide the surgeon with diagnostic feedback using computer animations with audio commentary. Finally, MedicusTM will be integrated with another tool that trains and assesses critical cognitive skills in laparoscopic surgery. The end result will be an integrated set of training and assessment tools for laparoscopic surgeons in the military and civilian medical communities. Benefits: The anticipated benefits of our laparoscopic skills training and assessment system include: reliable, valid, and objective measures of psychomotor skills; sophisticated deliberate practice-based instruction for remedying observed skill deficiencies; and an integrated means for training cognitive and psychomotor skills in laparoscopic surgery. The principal benefit will be improved reliability and validity of measurement, thereby helping to enhance the margin of safety by ensuring that surgeons who pass the exam do so because of their own skill level, and not because of any extraneous factors such as idiosyncrasies of the examination proctor. A secondary benefit will be substantially improved efficiency in the process of accrediting surgeons, because the surgeons' performance will be assessed in real-time, and diagnostic feedback can immediately be provided for resolving any skill deficiencies that are noted. Finally, MedicusTM can also be used for training surgical residents and providing meaningful benchmarks on their performance. Return