Education & Medicine: Bringing Science to Life with Virtual Reality

Creating a Talent Pipeline for Health Care Services

Gone are the days of the COVID-19 pandemic- so why are we still asking ourselves where the people are? Shouldn’t they have returned to the workforce over four years after the country shut down? If the shortages are in full force now, how can we work to create a pipeline and cut down the shortages for the future? This conversation has deep implications for every state and local economy. We must engage students in the professions with the highest shortages, starting with health care services.

How Do We Engage Students in High Demand Career Opportunities?

According to The Hill, The United States is likely to have a shortage of 200,000 nurses and 124,000 physicians. Each state economic development authority must address this issue and start engaging students in secondary schools now to do the best to curb these numbers.

We now live in a time where technology can give students access to real life data sets and the opportunity to impact people in real time. We talk about student agency all the time, what if we gave students tools that allow them to contribute to the medical field? To the science field? To help identify a health issue before the doctor has time to look at it? If we want to build this pipeline we have to stop using artistic renderings in virtual reality spaces, we have to make it real. Once students feel like they are making an impact or contributing to science, they will feel no other option than to go down the health care services pathway we so desperately need them to go on as a nation.

Generation Z already started the shift in what they are looking for once they enter the workforce. According to the Stanford Report, Generation Z has eight different expectations from previous generations - including that they expect change, they are pragmatic, they want to make a difference - along with several others. Generation Alpha will enter the workforce as early as 2029 - only five years down the road. We don’t know what their generation will look for, but to be certain, it will be a continuation of Gen Z.

If we want to attract the next generation of talent to the healthcare field, we have to let them experience how they can make a difference and change things. They don’t have to have already graduated high school to understand how they can change people’s lives - especially when it comes to health, either in diagnosing or helping to find and propose solutions.

What are the Tools We Need to Engage Them?

Rows of desks with a teacher up front are not going to build the desire to serve others, be empathetic, and think creatively. The time for change is now. We talk about technology in education all the time, but are we actually changing what it’s being used for or just updating paper and pencils with a screen?

Virtual reality has a serious place when it comes to career exploration, simulations, and now, even looking at scans, ultrasounds, and other medical documents. Outdated textbooks with photos from years past are not going to engage the students we need to ensure a robust healthcare workforce years down the road. Placing students into the world of information to identify an issue on an ultrasound and save a baby’s life, find a spot of cancer that was overlooked by a doctor in time to give life saving treatment, or notice something off with blood cells to help with a chronic disease. 

One innovative initiative leading the charge in this endeavor is syGlass, a cutting-edge educational platform designed to revolutionize STEM education. More than just a virtual reality (VR) experience, syGlass serves as a catalyst for change, disrupting traditional STEM curricula to ignite excitement and foster scientific and critical thinking among students. At its core, syGlass provides an immersive and interactive visualization of massive, real-world scientific image data. Students get access to the same cutting-edge tools used by the research community, and have the opportunity to collaborate directly with them to make a real impact on their fields of study.

These experiences will shape the future for these students, and their excitement for the medical field will be off the charts. It’s time to use the technology we have to shape the future workforce- and if you’re ready, we’re here to help your state be on the pathway to a robust healthcare workforce.