University of Washington researchers aim to create the next generation of mannequins, with warm “flesh,” moist “tongues” and other human traits for training battlefield medics.
Thanks to an $8 million research grant from the Department of Defense, doctors at the WWAMI Institute for Simulation in Healthcare at the University of Washington Medical Center hope that the mannequins will give military surgical teams more realistic simulations of battlefield injuries and make the use of live animals for training unnecessary.
The prototype, known as Frank as a humorous nod to Frankenstein, is the initial result of the cutting edge research. When perfected in 2019, the lifelike mannequins will feature skin that is warm to the touch, moist tongues, layers of body fat and very human responses to the procedures being performed.
The mannequin is leveraging Washington State’s vast expertise in hardware,software and robotics to create the amazingly lifelike test subject. The project is completely open source, allowing manufacturers and software companies to add capabilities and modules to simulate specific parts of the body or different illnesses or injuries.
Learn more about this new generation of surgical mannequins and the work University of Washington workers are doing to bring it to market.