NSU Medical School Announces the Use of a Lifelike Robotic Human Simulator

Heidi Lane, Ed.D., College of Osteopathic Medicine assistant professor of internal medicine and director of patient-centered education(second from right), works on I-Stan with medical students

There are few lessons for medical students more valuable than those learned by examining real patients. At NSU’s medical school, however, students are practicing their trade on the next best thing: a life-like robotic human simulator. This device, in laymen’s parlance, looks like, feels like, and responds to treatment like a real human.

The only catch is that this “human” is filled with high-tech computerized sensors instead of real organs and costs $65,000. The METI I-Stan Simulator, as it’s called, is being used by NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine to train first and second-year medical students in the classroom before they see real patients during their clinical rotations at hospitals, health clinics and doctor’s offices during their third and fourth years.

Some of the I-Stan’s key features are:

• Pupils that automatically dilate and constrict in response to light
• Thumb twitch in response to a peripheral nerve stimulator
• Automatic recognition and response to administered drugs and drug dosages
• Variable lung compliance and airway resistance
• Automatic response to needle decompression of a tension pneumothorax, chest-tube drainage, and pericardiocentesis

Automatic control of urine output.