This presentation will introduce selected, ongoing healthcare simulation research projects led by the speaker, Dr. Inki Kim, through his collaboration with medical partners in hospitals. Simulation has long been accepted by the healthcare community for procedural training, skill assessment, and credentialing. Beyond dummy manikins, digital-health technology (such as medical imaging and virtual reality [VR]) has brought a flexibility to create a large variation of realistic care scenarios in an interactive manner. Yet, contemporary healthcare simulations are isolated from actual care settings and lack an intelligence needed to transfer the lessons learned from simulation interaction to care practice. Simulations of the future, as the speaker imagines, will help connect the disjoint realities of multiple care providers and catalyze innovation for care delivery. Toward that vision, this presentation aims to illustrate how emerging simulation modalities can be engineered and applied to specific care-delivery context, and explain how new simulation modalities will redefine the human interaction and potentially transform existing care models. Specifically, the first project will focus on the use of mixed reality (MR) technology for the screening and diagnosis of neurocognitive impairment, particularly concussion. The second project will describe the use of digital twin (DT) technology to support team-based training and care decision. The third project will briefly outline the creation of synthetic electrophysiology of the brain for migraine patients, and explain how that simulation will potentially impact the current pain-relieving therapy.
Dr. Inki Kim is Assistant Director of Research in Medical Simulation at the Health Care Engineering Systems Center (HCESC), a multidisciplinary research center at the UIUC backed by $112.5 million in endowment support to foster collaboration between engineers and physicians. Dr. Kim has expertise in quantitative measurement, analysis, and modeling of human behaviors and performance in the context of human-machine interaction. He is experienced with building various interactive simulations including haptic, 3D modeling, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), and pursues through simulated interactions, the scientific knowledge of neurocognitive processing underlying the iterative cycle of perception and action. He authored over 30 peer-reviewed scholarly articles and book sections in Neuroergonomics, Human-Machine Interaction, and digital simulations, and has 3 publications recognized as Best Paper by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He holds a patent on Dynamic Haptic Robotic Trainer for medical residents’ needle placement. Prior to joining the UIUC in 2019, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia for 3 years, received the Research Innovation Award and Graduate Medical Education Innovation Award from the University of Virginia Health Systems. He received a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2015, and the Master and Bachelor’s degrees in Industrial Engineering from Seoul National University in 2007 and in 2005, respectively. Throughout his career, Dr. Kim has supervised over 10 research projects sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, Systems Engineering Research Center, Samsung, Hyundai Motors, LG, IBM Korea, and more recently, through the Jump Applied Research in Community Health through Engineering and Simulation (ARCHES) program. He is an active member of the Society for Modeling and Simulation (SCS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
