Tech SA: Area company using augmented reality to train first responders, medical professionals

SAN ANTONIO – EMS and medical professions need to be ready for so many different situations but training in the classroom or on mannequins may not be enough.

MedCognition is a San Antonio company that developed augmented reality to make sure medical professionals are as prepared as possible.

“MedCognition is a holographic augmented reality critical care training platform, which is a mouthful. Ultimately, it’s frontline training for our of hospital professionals who live to save lives,” Russell J. Unrath, CEO MedCognition said.

MedCognition was founded in San Antonio in 2016.

“Honestly, the brainchild of the product came from Dr. Kevin King, who is a brigade surgeon in the 101st Airborne, and he realized that there was basically inaccurate or unrealistic, unreliable training with plastic mannequins,” Unrath said.

Using HoloLens glasses you can see the PerSim program in action, as the holographic patient is made to help frontline healthcare professionals save more lives.

“We’re creating our scenarios rather than in a gamified virtual environment. You’re doing it in the back of an ambulance in the E.R., in the O.R., or in the middle of the woods,” Unrath said.

Are we going to see more Augmented Reality training when it comes to medical personnel?

“I absolutely think this is where the medical industry is going. We are pushing very hard to make pursuing this the standard in frontline care,” Unrath said.

“We are looking to expand this into every community college, every pair of medicine program, every high school that wants it, and there’s about half a dozen high schools already utilizing our product. And then we’re expanding now into nursing. We’re expanding into critical care, early med schools as well,” Unrath said.